In that way the thing went through. As I was leaving the room, the idea occurred to me, "By the way, you don't know anything of a clique: the Dimensionists—Fourth Dimensionists?"
"Never heard of them," he negatived. "What's their specialty?"
"They're going to inherit the earth," I answered.
"Oh, I wish them joy," he closed.
"You don't happen to be one yourself? I believe it's a sort of secret society." He wasn't listening. I went out quietly.
The night effects of that particular neighbourhood have always affected me dismally. That night they upset me, upset me in much the same way, acting on much the same nerves as the valley in which I had walked with that puzzling girl. I remembered that she had said she stood for the future, that she was a symbol of my own decay—the whole silly farrago, in fact. I reasoned with myself—that I was tired, out of trim, and so on, that I was in a fit state to be at the mercy of any nightmare. I plunged into Southampton Row. There was safety in the contact with the crowd, in jostling, in being jostled.
[78]
