Chapter Ten

THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT

THE outward changes in Turgis, already noticed
by Miss Matfteld and Smeeth, were only tin)
scattered hints and clues, and by no means in
proportion to the changes within, for during these last
seven weeks, ever since that night when Lena Golspie
had failed to keep her appointment with him, his life had
been like a bad dream. There are some dreams, tremb-
ling on the edge of nightmare, in which the dreamer
goes rushing frantically through dismal reeling phantas-
magoria of familiar scenes and places trying to find a lost
somebody or something. This had been Turgis's real
life. He had got up as usual, bolted his breakfast and
exchanged a word or two with the Pelumptons, hurried
down to the Tube, climbed into the City, sent and re
ceived advice notes, telephoned to this firm and that, fed
variously in teashops and dining-rooms, looked at news-
papers, even gone to the pictures, all as usual; but these
customary activities had merely been a dream within a
dream, a shadowy routine of existence. His real life had
been this pursuit of Lena, and so far it had had all the
urgency and dark bewilderment of a bad dream.

He had been able to call again at the flat before her
father had returned, but she had only spent half an hour
with him and had been vague and shifty in her excuses.

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