"Er--what minerals have you got?" asked he. "Minerals!" The man with the wine card was nonplussed. Jones saw his mistake. "Soda water," said he. "Get me some soda water." The fillet of sole with sauce Tartare was excellent. Nothing, not even the minerals could dim that fact. As he ate he looked about him, and with all the more ease, because he found now that nobody was looking at him; his self consciousness died down, and he began speculating on the men around, their probable rank, fortune, and intellect. It seemed to Jones that the latter factor was easier of determination than the other two. What struck him more forcibly was a weird resemblance between them all, a phantom thing, a link undiscoverable yet somehow there. This tribal expression is one of the strangest phenomena eternally comforting and battering our senses. Just as men grow like their wives, so do they grow like their fellow tradesmen, waiters like waiters, grooms like grooms, lawyers like lawyers, politicians like politicians. More, it has been undeniably proved that landowners grow like landowners, just as shepherds grow like sheep, and aristocrats like aristocrats. A common idea moulds faces to its shape, and a common want of ideas allows external circumstances to do the moulding. So, English Conservative Politicians of the higher order, being worked upon by external circumstances of a similar nature, have perhaps a certain similar expression. Radical Politicians on the other hand, shape to a common idea--evil--but still an idea. Jones was not thinking this, he was just recognising that all these men belonged to the same class, and he felt in himself that, not only did he not belong to that class, but that Rochester also, probably, had found himself in the same position. That might have accounted for the wildness and eccentricity of Rochester, as demonstrated in that mad carouse and hinted at by the woman in the feather boa. The wildness of a monkey condemned to live amongst goats, hanging on to their horns, and clutching at their scuts, and playing all the tricks that contrariness might suggest to a contrary nature. Something of this sort was passing through Jones' mind, and as he attacked his strawberry ice, for the first time since reading that momentous piece of news in the evening newspaper his mental powers became focussed on the question that lay at the very heart of all this business. It struck him now so very forcibly that he laid down his spoon and stared before him, forgetful of the place where he was and the people around him. "Why did that guy commit suicide?" That was the question. He could find no answer to it.