invitation to luncheon in the corridor (Navy rations had not fitted my
stomach for these constant debauches of gossamer food), strolled into
the town again in no very pleasant frame of mind.




CHAPTER VII

It was only at moments like these I had any time to reflect on my
circumstances or that giddy chance which had shot me into space in
this fashion, and, frankly, the opportunities, when they did come,
brought such an extraordinary depressing train of thought, I by no means
invited them. Even with the time available the occasion was always awry
for such reflection. These dainty triflers made sulking as impossible
amongst them as philosophy in a ballroom. When I stalked out like that
from the library in fine mood to moralise and apostrophise heaven in a
way that would no doubt have looked fine upon these pages, one sprightly
damsel, just as the gloomy rhetoric was bursting from my lips, thrust a
flower under my nose whose scent brought on a violent attack of sneezing,
her companions joining hands and dancing round me while they imitated
my agony. Then, when I burst away from them and rushed down a narrow
arcade of crumbling mansions, another stopped me in mid-career, and
taking the honey-stick she was sucking from her lips, put it to mine,
like a pretty, playful child. Another asked me to dance, another to
drink pink oblivion with her, and so on. How could one lament amongst
all this irritating cheerfulness?

An might have helped me, for poor An was intelligent for a Martian,
but she had disappeared, and the terrible vacuity of life in the planet