516 ANGEL PAVEMENT

the road. He tried to think. Had he really gone there
and done that? He had gone to that room so many times
in hi* imagination, had so many scenes there, so many
vivid encounters with Lena, that perhaps this last visit
wasn't real either. Had he done that? His fingers,
closing round ghostly flesh, sent a sharp message to say
he had done it. Yes, he had. Then there was no chang-
ing it at all. It was there. As if curtains had suddenly
parted and been drawn up, he saw the room again; he
was back in it; a Turkish woman on a box of cigarettes,
and then-on the floor, not a movement. Something
inside him, a little wild thing, trapped, mad, sent up a
scream. Something else muttered over and over again
that it was an accident, only an accident, a pure acci-
dent, just an accident, all accidental, simply an accident;
and then it said that he wasn't well, not at all well, ill
in fact, nerves and all that, yes nerves, quite ill, not
healthy, not well. The tears came into his eyes as he
thought how true this was, for lots of people had said
that he wasn't well and he knew he wasn't well. Then
a bus came up and everybody got on it, so he got on it
too, and sat inside. The man next to him had a big
swelling at the back of his neck, and for a moment
Turgis was sorry for him, but after that he forgot all
about him, forgot about all the other people in the bus,
forgot all about Oxford Street and Regent Street that
rolled past like a gleaming and glittering frieze. He did
not notice where the bus was going; he did not care; he
sank into a sick stupor.

"'Ere, come along," said the conductor. "Fares,
please."

Mechanically, vacantly, Turgis handed him twopence
and received his ticket.