that
his notion of paradise was an endless series of second-hand shops.
He had an admirable balance; and he held that a man might make a
faultless interior for himself and yet not necessarily lose his
balance. He resented being called a specialist in furniture. He
regarded himself as an amateur of life, and, if a specialist in
anything, as a specialist in friendships. Yet he was a solitary man
(liking solitude without knowing that he liked it), and in the midst
of the perfections which he had created he sometimes gloomily thought:
"What in the name of God am I doing on this earth?"

He went into the drawing-room, and there, by the fire and in front of
a formidable blue chair whose arms developed into the grinning
heads of bronze lions, stood the lacquered table consecrated to
his breakfast tray; and his breakfast tray, with newspaper and
correspondence, had been magically placed thereon as though by
invisible hands. And on one arm of the easy-chair lay the rug which,
because a dressing-gown does not button all the way down, he put over
his knees while breakfasting in winter. Yes, he admitted with pleasure
that he was "well served". Before eating he opened the piano--a modern
instrument concealed in an ingeniously confected Regency case--and
played with taste a Bach prelude and fugue.

His was not the standardised and habituated kind of musical culture
which takes a Bach prelude and fugue every morning before breakfast
with or without a glass of Lithia water or fizzy saline. He did,
however, customarily begin the day at the piano, and on this
particular morning he happened to play a Bach prelude and fugue.

And as he played he congratulated himself on not having gone to seek
Christine in the Promenade on the previous night, as impatience
had tempted him to do. Such a procedure would have been an error in
worldliness and bad from every point of view. He had wisely rejected
the temptation.

In the deep blue arm-chair, with the rug over his knees and one hand
on a lion's head, he glanced first at the opened _Times_, because
of the war. Among the few letters was one with the heading of the
Reveille Motor Horn Company Ltd.

G.J. like his father, had been a solicitor. When he was twenty-five
his father, a widower, had died and left him a respectable fortune
and a very good practice. He sold half the practice to an incoming
partner, and four years later he sold the other half of the practice
to the same man. At thirty he