This must be true of all gatherings, of all except religious meetings. The strangeness, and the hopes aroused by strangeness, are illusions. Mirages arising wherever people gather expectantly together. The few who at parties have not the glint of expectation in their eyes are those who know this. Some are cynical. Some enduring. One or two ignore people as persons. See them only as parts of a process. It is true then, though town-life hides the fact, that individual life cannot begin until the illusion of wonderful people presently to be met, is vanquished. The whole world, all the scattered people brought together and made known to each other, would soon be like this party, each tested and placed. Even the best of them known as limited. Then domestic life, troglodyte life, is the severest test of quality. The coming to the end of the charm of strangeness. Of Exogamy. The making terms and going on, or the hard work of silently discovering near things afresh. Re-thinking them. Keeping them near, as strange things are at first near, and, like strange things, beloved. “What have I to do with thee?” Yes. But that was a man who had a message for everyone in the world and very little time to get round with it. Not the voice of one who is weary of the near in space and time and hopes to find the distant more appreciative. Yet even he demanded a personal allegiance. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” What is love? Who can interpret commandments? They all stood round adoring, begging for explanations and instructions. Perhaps he meant, “You admire what I am. Take my hints. You will find out the rest.” Wandering eyes were growing rarer, though still new-comers arrived and toured hopefully. Groups were forming of people masked, or visibly bored, sustaining the familiar. Wit, surrounded, was hard at work. Here and there rival theorists were audible, disarmed by the occasion and affably wrangling. And everyone, even the schemers circulating girt and keen, or wearing the veil of nonchalance, waited now for the gathering to do something of itself. For here for good or ill in the circling Lycurgan year, was a party, and everyone counting on at least a moment’s distraction. How intolerable with its challenge, its throwing back the self empty on to the self, and its revelation of the weariness of selves, would be the whole spectacle, but for here and there a figure of sincerity bearing the burdens of the rest, drawing nerve-poisoning influences from the air.