service of automata. A satiric comment, which he had heard sailors repeat on stormy nights, was running through his head, "Who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea!"
A craving for isolation sent him walking away from the central streets, beyond the railway station, down a barren road towards infinite flat stretches of sand. In a grubby shop by the wayside he stopped to drink Turkish coffee and eat sweet Syrian pastries. Then he returned to the glaring waste and continued his aimless walk. He was a small boy again, playing hookey. Outwardly he trembled, but an unwonted inner calm, like that of a top at full spin, was stealing over him. Some conflict was being waged between two parts of his nature. He had no desire to take sides; was not even curious as to the outcome.
At length he sat down for sheer weariness in the shade of a peppercorn tree by the side of a deserted camel track. On all sides the wilderness extended. Far to his left were the only signs of civilization: low walls and a huddle of roofs. At long intervals, a few hundred yards before him, ships passed, as though slowly cutting their way through banks of sand. There was no trace of the ribbon of water that floated them.
The conflict was at an end, and the strange inner calm had enveloped him in a physical numbness that left his mind pellucid. In planes of existence infinitely remote, clocks must be ticking, pens recording, throats laughing and cursing, engines grinding and propelling. Here, inertia reigned, unchallengeably.
An odd procession of young Minases trooped before him: timid, cocksure, lonely, eager, disappointed, ecstatic and morose boys—all authentic versions of himself, and all dead.
A vision of the future succeeded. The boyish Minases were sent scurrying by sadder, wiser ghosts, constitut-
