'
Before dressing for dinner, you take a hot bath. There are patent
taps, some for fresh water, others for sea water. You hesitate. Yet
you know that whichever you touch will effuse but the water of Lethe,
after all. You dress before your fire. The coals have burnt now to a
lovely glow. Once and again, you eye them suspiciously. But no, there
are no faces in them. All's well.
Sleek and fresh, you sit down to dinner in the `Grande Salle a`
Manger.' Graven on your wine-glasses, emblazoned on your soup-plate,
are the armorial bearings of the company that shelters you. The
College of Arms might sneer at them, be down on them, but to you they
are a joy, in their grand lack of links with history. They are a
sympathetic symbol of your own newness, your own impersonality. You
glance down the endless menu. It has been composed for a community.
None of your favourite dishes (you once had favourite dishes) appears
in it, thank heaven! You will work your way through it, steadily,
unquestioningly, gladly, with a communal palate. And the wine? All
wines are alike here, surely. You scour the list vaguely, and order a
pint of 273. Your eye roves over the adjacent tables.
You behold a galaxy of folk evidently born, like yourself, anew. Some,
like yourself, are solitary.
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