believed that, taking me for the least admirable and necessary
of God's creatures, he meant to convey his opinion to me for my own
good. I glanced up at the lighted windows of the train, and saw the
composed, careless faces of haughty persons who were going direct from
London to Manchester, and to whom the Five Towns was nothing but a
delay. I envied them. I wanted to return to the shelter of the train.
When it left, I fancied that my last link with civilization was broken.
Then another train puffed in, and it was simply taken by assault in a
fraction of time, to an incomprehensible bawling of friendly sociable
porters. Season-ticket holders at Finsbury Park think they know how to
possess themselves of a train; they are deceived. So this is where
Simon Fuge came from (I reflected)! The devil it is (I reflected)! I
tried to conceive what the invaders of the train would exclaim if
confronted by one of Simon Fuge's pictures. I could imagine only one
word, and that a monosyllable, that would meet the case of their
sentiments. And his dalliance, his tangential nocturnal deviations in
gondolas with exquisite twin odalisques! There did not seem to be much
room for amorous elegance in the lives of these invaders. And his
death! What would they say of his death? Upon my soul, as I stood on
that dirty platform, in a milieu of advertisements of soap, boots, and
aperients, I began to believe that Simon Fuge never had lived, that he
was a mere illusion of his friends and his small public. All that I saw
around me was a violent negation of Simon Fuge, that entity of rare,
fine, exotic sensibilities, that perfectly mad gourmet of sensations,
that exotic seer of beauty.

I caught sight of my acquaintance and host, Mr Robert Brindley, coming
towards me on the platform. Hitherto I had only met him in London,
when, as chairman of the committee of management of the Wedgwood
Institution and School of Art at Bursley, he had called on me at the
British Museum for advice as to loan exhibits. He was then dressed like
a self-respecting tourist. Now, although an architect by profession, he
appeared to be anxious to be mistaken for a sporting squire. He wore
very baggy knickerbockers, and leggings, and a cap. This raiment was
apparently the agreed uniform of the easy classes in the Five Towns;
for in the crowd I had noticed several such consciously superior
figures among the artisans. Mr Brindley, like most of the people in the
station, had a slig