Flavio winked and turned away his head, as who should say

"Obviously here."

George accepted the hint. He went upstairs, and changed into black serge: borrowed a few sovereigns from his landlord: ate his lunch of bread and milk; and took the L. and N.W. Rail to Highbury. Walking away from the station amid the blatant and vivacious inurbanity of Islington Upper Street, he kept his mental processes inactive—the higher mental processes of induction and deduction, the faculties of criticism and judgment. His method was Aristotelean, in that he drew his universals from a consideration of numerous particulars. He had plenty of material for thought; and he stored it till the time for thinking came. Now, he was out of doors for the sake of physical exercise. Also, he was getting the morning's events into perspective. At present his mind resembled warm wax on a tablet, wherein externals inscribed but transient impressions—an obese magenta Jewess with new boots which had a white line round their idiotic high heels—a baby with neglected nostrils festooned over the side of a mail-cart—a neat boy's leg, long and singularly well-turned, extended in the act of mounting a bicycle—an Anglican sister-of-mercy displaying side-spring prunellos and one eye in a haberdasher's violent window—a venerable shy drudge of a piano-tuner whose left arm was dragged down by the weight of the unmistakable little bag of tools—the weary anxious excruciating asking look in the eyes of all. He made his way south-westward, walking till he was tired for an hour and a half.

Anon, he was lying face downward in the calidarium of the bath, a slim white form, evenly muscular, boyishly fine and smooth. His forehead rested on his crossed arms, veiling his eyes. He came here, because here he was unknown: the place, with its attendants and frequenters, was quite strange to him: he would not be bored by the banalities of familiar tractators; and an[Pg 44] encounter with any of his acquaintance was out of the question. From time to time he refreshed himself in the shower: but, while his procumbent body was at rest in the hot oxygenated air, he let his mind work easily and quickly. After two hours, he concluded his bath with a long cold plunge; and retired rosily tingling to the unctuarium to smoke. Here he made the following entries in his pocket-book:

[Pg 44]

"Have I been fair to them? Yes: but unmerciful. N.B. For an act to be really good and meritorious, it must be performed noluntarily and with self-compulsion.

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