Everything pointed, like the trailing fronds of those plants of home, toward a future that could hold only trouble, pain and disaster. That man in the blue and yellow checked Corinthian helmet, who dripped blood, that man with my face—why did he haunt me? Had he killed and mutilated that young girl whose naked and blood-spattered headless body had rolled like a macabre Cleopatra from some decadent sadist madhouse play? Following Pomfret as he advanced on Paul Benenson I felt less like social platitudes with that bore than going five rounds with a tiger shark. Benenson’s round gray face with the absurdly antique pince-nez in their rolled gold rims he affected smiled benignly upon all whom he met as though their day had thereby been fulfilled. I shook hands with a curt word or two and then went off for another look at a remarkably fine globe of the world that stood in globular dignity by itself in a corner. The ticket said Lot Forty-five, so that it would be coming up fairly soon during the morning session.
