mail had been distributed half an

    The sun of that same day going down, dusk was saluted as usualat the hotel by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights. 　　The hours between dinner and bedtime were always difficult enoughto kill, and the night after the dance they were further tarnishedby the peevishness of dissipation. Certainly, in the opinionof Hirst and Hewet, who lay back in long arm-chairs in the middleof the hall, with their coffee-cups beside them, and their cigarettesin their hands, the evening was unusually dull, the women unusuallybadly dressed, the men unusually fatuous. Moreover, when the mail had been distributed half an hour ago there were no letters foreither of the two young men. As every other person, practically,had received two or three plump letters from England, which theywere now engaged in reading, this seemed hard, and promptedHirst to make the caustic remark that the animals had been fed. 　　Their silence, he said, reminded him of the silence in the lion-housewhen each beast holds a lump of raw meat in its paws. He went on,stimulated by this comparison, to liken some to hippopotamuses,some to canary birds, some to swine, some to parrots, and some toloathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of sheep. 　　The intermittent sounds--now a cough, now a horrible wheezingor throat-clearing, now a little patter of conversation--were just,he declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when thebones are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewet,who, after a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upona thicket of native spears which were so ingeniously arrangedas to run their points at you whichever way you approached them. 　　He was clearly oblivious of his surroundings; whereupon Hirst,perceiving that Hewet's mind was a complete blank, fixed hisattention more closely upon his fellow-creatures. He was too farfrom them, however, to hear what they were saying, but it pleased himto construct little theories about them from their gestures and appearance. 　　Mrs. Thornbury had received a great many letters. She was completelyengrossed in them. When she had finished a page she handed itto her husband, or gave him the sense of what she was reading in aseries of short quotations linked together by a sound at the backof her throat. "Evie writes that George has gone to Glasgow.

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