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years ago …?”
    â€œI do beg your pardon,” Sir Bernard said. “But that’s what it looks like, though (unless you’ve improved the stomach out of all knowledge) it probably isn’t. I wouldn’t have bothered you if other subjects for discussion—jewels, digestion, and the tradition of Israel—hadn’t cropped up. But unless you take that unfortunate coroner’s view of ‘mere talk’, do be kind and come.”
    Considine smiled brilliantly. “I do a little,” he said, “but I allow it is a purification, a ritual and actual purification of the energies. I’m rather uncertain how much longer I shall be in England for the present, but if it’s at all possible … Will you write or telephone or something in a day or two? My address is 29, Rutherford Gardens, Hampstead.”
    â€œHallo,” Roger said, “we’re up that way. My embalming workshop’s there,” he added sardonically.
    Sir Bernard turned his head, a little surprised. Roger caught his eyes and nodded towards Considine.
    â€œ He knows,” he said. “I embalm poetry there—with the most popular and best-smelling unguents and so on, but I embalm it all right. I then exhibit the embalmed body to visitors at so much a head. They like it much better than the live thing, and I live by it, so I suppose it’s all right. No doubt the embalmers of Pharaoh were pleasant enough creatures. They weren’t called to any nonsense of following a pillar of fire between the piled waters of the Nile.”
    â€œIt’s burning in you now,” Considine said, “and you are on the threshold of a doorway that the Angel of Death went in—not yours.”
    â€œIf I could believe it——” Roger said. “Ask me to dine too, Sir Bernard. I want to ask Mr. Considine questions about Paradise Regained .”

Chapter Three
    THE PROCLAMATION OF THE HIGH EXECUTIVE
    By the time that Philip arrived home that evening the wildest rumours about Africa were being spread. At the office things had been during the last few days as bad as he had feared they might be, and he had been as useless as Sir Bernard had expected. Nothing had been heard from or of Munro for some weeks. Rosenberg’s suicide and, even more distressingly, his will, had startled and bothered the Stuyvesants to an indescribable degree. The motive power behind them, the object of motion in front, had both disappeared in blood; and no-one had the least idea what would happen. The Rosenberg legatees had been traced by mid-day; they were living in small upper rooms in Houndsditch, served by an old woman of their race. Extraordinary efforts had been made to procure interviews with them; unsuccessfully, since they merely refused to speak. There were, certainly, in the afternoon papers, sketches of them, but that was hardly the same thing. Even Governments were by way of being interested; high personages gazed at the reproductions dubiously. The two brothers looked as if they might be incapable of realizing the responsibilities of their present position. Two old, bearded, and violent faces stared out at England from journalistic pages. England stared back at them, and for the most part, quite reasonably, abandoned its interest. The Chief Rabbi also refused to be interviewed. Mr. Considine was interviewed, very unsatisfactorily, since he in effect refused to foreshadow, forestall, or foretell anybody’s intention. Philip read certainly that Mr. Considine had said that he was sure that there was no need for any public anxiety, that good sense (a quality which the Jews, he was reported to have declared, possessed to a marked degree) would distinguish the actions of the Rosenberg brothers, and that in the present critical times all minor racial prejudices must be set aside. By which Philip understood him to mean that racial prejudice in regard to Africa must swallow up the rest, as the serpent of