They were sitting in the hall of the hotel. It was the dressing hour and the place was almost empty. He shot a swift glance at her. “I’m sure I am,” she said. “Make home-coming a change to him. As you said yourself the other evening. It’s good for him to get away from it all, now and then.”!

“Paper going well, sir?” he asked. “I often read it myself.” He had been speaking in a clear, self-confident tone, as if at last he saw his road before him to the end; and felt that nothing else mattered but that he should go forward hopefully, unfalteringly. Now he paused, and his eyes wandered. But the lines about his strong mouth deepened.

“Oh, why don’t you chuck it,” advised Miss Ensor, “give the Bourgeois a rest.” Through swinging doors, she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner, scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor’s whisky, of this other celebrity’s beer: it seemed the only message the people cared to hear. Even among the sirens of the pavement, she noticed that the quiet and merely pretty were hardly heeded. It was everywhere the painted and the overdressed that drew the roving eyes. “Tell them that,” he said. “Let them hear each other. It’s the same at a meeting. You wait ten minutes sometimes before one man will summon up courage to put a question; but once one or two have ventured they spring up all round you. I was wondering,” he added, “if you would help me; let me use you, now and again.”