With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the veld, and shook it warmly.

“England has got on your nerves, Barry,” he said, gently.”  But we’re all right in London.  The key-board of the big instrument is here.”

“But the organ is out there, Byng, and it’s the organ that makes the music, not the keys.  We’re all going to pieces here, every one of us.  I see it.  Herr Gott, I see it plain enough!  We’re in the wrong shop.  We’re not buying or selling; we’re being sold.  Baas—­big Baas, let’s go where there’s room to sling a stone; where we can see what’s going on round us; where there’s the long sight and the strong sight; where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can have a run for your money.”

Byng smiled benevolently.  Yet something was stirring his senses strangely.  The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils.  “You’re not ending up as you began, Barry,” he replied.  “You started off like an Israelite on the make, and you’re winding up like Moody and Sankey.”

“Well, I’m right now in the wind-up.  I’m no better, I’m no worse, than the rest of our fellows, but I’m Irish—­I can see.  The Celt can always see, even if he can’t act.  And I see dark days coming for this old land.  England is wallowing.  It’s all guzzle and feed and finery, and nobody cares a copper about anything that matters—­”

“About Cape to Cairo, eh?”

“Byng, that was one of my idiocies.  But you think over what I say, just the same.  I’m right.  We’re rotten cotton stuff now in these isles.  We’ve got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the organs too.”

Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly.  “Well, Wallstein will give us a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects after the foie gras, Barry.”

Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk.  As he did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece.  A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened.

“Barry was right,” he murmured, scrutinizing himself.  “I’ve degenerated.  We’ve all degenerated.  What’s the matter, anyhow?  What is the matter?  I’ve got everything—­everything—­everything.”

Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening dress smiling at him.  She held up a pink finger in reproof.

“Naughty boy,” she said.  “What’s this I hear—­that you have thrown me over—­me—­to go and dine with the Wallstein!  It’s nonsense!  You can’t go.  Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you.”