ception of the irony of the situation. What purpose could be served by his absorption of the contents of one more book? What purpose, for that matter, had been served by the omnivorous reading of thirty years? Books had nourished his mind as bread had nourished his body. But why should either have been nourished? In a few months or weeks or days, the one would be under the ground and the other would have vanished God knew where. An echo of war-time phraseology recurred to him—spurlos versenkt!
Perhaps this volume, after all, could throw a glimmer on the probable destiny of one's spirit. One might read it on the off chance that it would impart a smattering of spiritual etiquette, in case there were some sort of conscious survival after death. He bought the volume, and went out again into the cold sunlight of the rain-splashed street.
He passed cafés where men were sipping pleasant concoctions, passed stalls heaped with fruits, heard scraps of good-humoured talk, caught glimpses of fresh cheeks and keen eyes. What a pity to leave it all behind, what a pity beyond the range of tears and chagrin! What incredible and meaningless extravagance, que la vie! Thirty-five years of seething and frothing like a busy bubble, then, instead of floating off, as a bubble should, towards some Empyrean, one merely relapsed into the illimitable ocean—the river with but a single bank. One's iridescent personal bloom, a mere reflection, vanished with a little plop, and one dispersed as air and water. The arch-anticlimax! It was not that one resented being merged into the reservoir of life; it was simply that one endlessly wondered why a complicated system of bubbles should have been ordained. Did they, perhaps, make it possible for a greater quantity of oxygen to be dissolved into the water for the benefit of fish—and if so, what, in the metaphor, corresponded to fish?
