But the overruling disconcertingness was to find himself unconcerned. It was as if some mysterious oil had been introduced into the workings of his mind. If a thought irked him, he thought of something else. If a project miscarried, a flooding serenity swept him beyond it. He lived a tranquil truant, dissociated from himself as though by a slight agreeable fever—such a fever as one might catch by smelling a flower. This happy state had begun when he stood watching the game of beggar-my-neighbour, and became aware that the players didn’t notice him, that his large obtrusive mortality made him in some way invisible to them—invisible in that they did not connect with him, felt no obligation to do so. In his former life, he lived in a balancing act between obligations. He had an obligation to do such-and-such, he had no obligation to do the other. He performed the obligation; and the best he was likely to get out of it was the thought that it was done with, for the time being. He omitted the non-obligation; and was lucky to get off without a kick from his conscience. He had never conceived of the total release of not being an obligation himself. Day after day, month after month, went by and not once did he see a fairy’s face clouded with a look of obligation. Whether they conversed with him, praised his pronunciation, said how much better he looked without his wig (it had eventually fallen to pieces); whether they vanished leaving him halfway through a sentence, their motives were pure as the heavens. They had done as they wished.