As he departed from the Oriental Mr. Prohack sighed:  “Poor Insott!” A sturdy and even exultant cheerfulness was, however, steadily growing in him.  Poor Insott, unaware that he had been talking to a man with an assured income of ten thousand pounds a year, had unconsciously helped that man to realise the miracle of his own good fortune.

Mr. Prohack’s route home lay through a big residential square or so and along residential streets of the first quality.  All the houses were big, and they seemed bigger in the faint October mist.  It was the hour after lighting up and before the drawing of blinds and curtains.  Mr. Prohack had glimpses of enormous and magnificent interiors,—­some right in the sky, some on the ground—­with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily framed pictures, mighty furniture, statuary, and superb and nonchalant menials engaged in the pleasant task of shutting away those interiors from the vulgar gaze.  The spectacle continued furlong upon furlong, monotonously.  There was no end to the succession of palaces of the wealthy.  Then it would be interrupted while Mr. Prohack crossed a main thoroughfare, where scores of young women struggled against a few men for places in glittering motor-buses that were already packed with successful fighters for room in them.  And then it would be resumed again in its majesty.

The sight of the street-travellers took Mr. Prohack’s mind back to Insott.  He felt a passionate sympathy for the Insotts of the world, and also for the Prohacks of six hours earlier.  Once Mr. Prohack had been in easier circumstances; but those circumstances, thanks to the ambitions of statesmen and generals, and to the simplicity of publics, had gradually changed from easy to distressed.  He saw with terrible clearness from what fate the Angmering miracle had saved him and his.  He wanted to reconstruct society in the interest of those to whom no miracle had happened.  He wanted to do away with all excessive wealth; and by “excessive” he meant any degree of wealth beyond what would be needed for the perfect comfort of himself, Mr. Prohack,—­a reasonable man if ever there was one!  Ought he not to devote his fortune to the great cause of reconstructing society?  Could he enjoy his fortune while society remain unreconstructed?  Well, societies were not to be reconstructed by the devoting of fortunes to the work.  Moreover, if he followed such an extreme course he would be regarded as a crank, and he could not have borne to be regarded as a crank.  He detested cranks more than murderers or even profiteers.  As for enjoying his fortune in present circumstances, he thought that he might succeed in doing so, and that anyhow it was his duty to try.  He was regrettably inconsistent.

II