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Avenue. It bored him to retrace his steps; and besides, with
that news, he did not want to read, he wanted to sit alone
and think. He made up his mind to go to the British Mu-
seum. Solitude was now his only luxury. Since he had been
at Lynn’s he had often gone there and sat in front of the
groups from the Parthenon; and, not deliberately thinking,
had allowed their divine masses to rest his troubled soul.
But this afternoon they had nothing to say to him, and after
a few minutes, impatiently, he wandered out of the room.
There were too many people, provincials with foolish fac-
es, foreigners poring over guide-books; their hideousness
besmirched the everlasting masterpieces, their restlessness
troubled the god’s immortal repose. He went into another
room and here there was hardly anyone. Philip sat down
wearily. His nerves were on edge. He could not get the peo-
ple out of his mind. Sometimes at Lynn’s they affected him
in the same way, and he looked at them file past him with
horror; they were so ugly and there was such meanness in
their faces, it was terrifying; their features were distorted
with paltry desires, and you felt they were strange to any
ideas of beauty. They had furtive eyes and weak chins. There
was no wickedness in them, but only pettiness and vulgarity.
Their humour was a low facetiousness. Sometimes he found
himself looking at them to see what animal they resembled
(he tried not to, for it quickly became an obsession,) and he
saw in them all the sheep or the horse or the fox or the goat.
Human beings filled him with disgust.
But presently the influence of the place descended upon
him. He felt quieter. He began to look absently at the tomb-

0 Of Human Bondage