THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT 515

almost angrily; "Here, I say, how do I find Nugent
Terrace?" And when Turgis muttered that he didn't
know, that he was a stranger in that district, the big man
said that he was a stranger too and that everybody he
asked was a stranger, that they were all bloody strangers.
When Turgis was walking on again, he kept repeating
that-"all bloody strangers." He noticed things as he
went along, though they weren't very real, only like the
things you see in the background of a film, Maida Vale
turned itself into Edgware Road, and immediately be-
came bright and crowded, a gleaming medley of shop
windows, pubs, picture theatre entrances, hawkers*
barrows, and pale faces. There was a shop where you
could get sixpenny packets of gaspers for fivepence. A
woman was shouting at a pub door; she was drunk. A
lot of people were waiting to see the pictures, and a
fellow with a banjo was singing to them. Two China-
men came out of a sweet shop: All These Chocolates
Our Own Make. That fried fish smelt bad. Two men
starting a row, and a woman trying to pull one of them
away. A good raincoat for 25/6. Funny what a lot of
these imitation bunches of bananas there were, and
didn't look a bit like the real ones either. That chap
standing in the shop doorway was just like Smeeth,
might be his double. It streamed on and on, like a
coloured film, a film with heavy bumping bodies and
real eyes in it. Marble Arch, and some people waiting
for buses.

Now, quite suddenly, he felt sick and terribly tired.
There was nothing left of his body but some tiny aching
old bones, but his head was enormous and there was
more screeching and grinding and dull roaring in the
great hollow inside it than there was among the cars in