Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/104

 that, for example, was too strong, that that passed all the boundaries, and two persons who sounded like four were very angry and it was restful to let somebody else do all the spleen-venting in the world. When you came to think of it, there was so infinitely much that needn't be worried about by oneself. He felt remote and disembodied, though he knew that the moment he arose from the chair and began to think about shaving water and clothes his body would reassert itself in manifold aches and heavinesses.

The air was strong and cool; one wanted to close one's eyes and bathe in it, instead of getting into the same old trousers and the same dreary shoes. Beyond the garden wall somebody was beating a carpet, and beyond that, far beyond, were the raucous cries of a vendor of unintelligible wares: just like the second act of Louise. Beyond that, on all sides, was Paris, a mystery, a trick of civilization, an exciting new chapter in the Thanet saga, and it was pleasant to loll here in the tiny heart of it and imagine what Paris "was like." Always, he reflected, in whatever city or in whatever situation, pleasant or desperate, he would be somewhere in the tiny heart of it, imagining what it was like while being ever so concrete a part of it. Life was an eternal preparation for something that never came off. Paris, Sophie Scantleberry had once remarked, was more than any other city an amplifier of moods: if you were of a blithe temperament it fed you gaiety till you were surfeited; if you were