ment of the most conventional of men. Certainly he had met no perfect exemplar of it. Compared with the illicit traffickings of those with whom he competed, his own intrigues seemed childlike and straightforward. His whole policy had been to obtain, for himself and his friend, as high a price as possible for whatever he could persuade people they needed. He studied the idiosyncrasies and ambitions of utilizable men and women, then set about gratifying them; for which service he induced them to buy, or constrain their sycophants to buy, Patrick Coyle's reputable commodities.
During the second year of his association with Patrick Coyle, notwithstanding the impetus given to their activities by the acquisition of a car and other tangible signs of prosperity, Paul found the social round growing irksome. The exhilaration of being sought after by fashionable hostesses gave place to ennui. The pleasure of knowing himself able to cut a dash gave place to disgust at the pettiness of dash-cutting. Wide acquaintanceship involved myriad obligations and drew his energies into silly channels. Fate had ordained for him a life of meditation, and he began to resent the daily incursions on his privacy. Not even in Vienna had his environment been so cumbered with people. From a source of stimulation, the multitude became a source of confusion. He was losing sight of truth under the stress of play-acting, and only the determination to fulfil his compact kept him in his rôle.
Whenever the babel became too insistent, he fled from the city, hired a donkey, ferried it across the river, and took refuge in the desert. There, after an hour's riding, he would rest, and by yielding his soul over to the desert, which like the sea symbolized eternity, achieve a sense of his own puniness compensated by an exalted sense of relationship with the cosmic intelligence. Then his life, and all forms of life, took on the aspect of reflections
