Chapter VII

And so the end came. In those last days I worked more feverishly than ever, writing my book, attending committees, speaking on platforms throughout the country. I was the chief speaker during that by-election of Brooks’s at Manchester, which I still believe might have been the germ of a new social order, of coherences and approximations, of differentiations and realizations beyond the imagining of the men of our time, but to be very clearly and very palpably apprehended by that future race for whom we, in a blind and groping way, are living and building.... And then the blow fell....

It was a Friday afternoon. The House had risen early after throwing out some absurd Bill that that ass Biffin had brought in; I think it was something about Bee Disease. I had been one of the tellers for the Noes, and at three o’clock I walked out into Palace Yard and along the chalky stone cloister that leads to the private tunnel through which members enter the Underground Railway station. I had promised to meet Astarte at four at the foot of the Scenic Railway (this was before the time when little Higgins revolutionized the amusement business with his actino-gyroscopes) in the Earl’s Court Exhibition. Since her marriage with Binger communication had been increasingly difficult for us. All her letters were opened, and Binger had eavesdroppers at work in the telephone exchanges. Her chauffeur, happily, played his master false, and she was usually able to keep appointments when she had made them; and for some months we had arranged our meetings by little cryptic notices in the agony column of the _Morning Post_. We had thought ourselves safe. But she must have dropped a casual word to somebody; some fool had given us away; and when I got to Earl’s Court I found that Astarte was there, but that Mary and Cecilia were there as well....