If you step this way, the manager will see you,” said the clerk, lifting the flap of the counter.

Joyce rose from the cane-bottomed chair on which he had been sitting, and followed the clerk through the busy outer office into the private room beyond. An elderly man in gold spectacles looked up from his desk.

“What can I do for you?”

“I am seeking employment,” said Joyce, “can you give me any?”

“Employment?”

If Joyce had asked him for Prester John’s cap, or the Cham of Tartary’s beard, his tone could not have expressed more surprise.

“Yes,” replied Joyce. “I don’t mind what it is—clerk, copyist, handy-man, messenger—so long as it’s work.”

“Utterly impossible,” said the manager, shortly.

“Would it be of any use to leave my address?” asked Joyce.

“Not a bit. Good day to you.”

Joyce walked out apathetically on to the landing. It was a nest of city offices in a great block of buildings in Fenchurch Street, a labyrinth of staircases, passages, and ground-glass doors black-lettered with the names of firms. He was going through them systematically. Often he could not gain access to a person in authority. When he succeeded, it was the same history of rebuff. He felt somewhat downcast at the result of this last interview, the cheerful alacrity with which he had been received having given him an unreasonable hope. He paused for a few moments deciding upon what door to try next. Some names looked encouraging, others forbidding—a futile superstition, yet one not without influence upon his unfed mind. Why “Griffith & Swan” should have attracted and “Willoughby Bros.” repelled him is a psychological problem that must forever remain insoluble. It is none the less a fact that he bent his steps along the passage to the door of the first-mentioned firm. But there he was repulsed at the outset. The chiefs were engaged. Had he an appointment?

What was his business? The only way to see the chiefs was by writing to fix an interview. Joyce retired, climbed wearily up the stone staircase to the next floor. Everywhere the same monotonous result.

At last his application was seriously entertained. His heart beat anxiously. It was at a firm of shipping agents. Two clerks had gone on their holiday, another one had just that morning fallen ill. They were short-handed. The junior partner, a brisk young fellow, looked shrewdly at Joyce, divining his education and capacity.

“I could give you some temporary work, certainly. Only too glad, for we are in a hole. But of course we must have some references.”

“I am afraid I can give you none,” replied Joyce. “I have had a good education and business training, and I could do your work. But I’m a lonely man—without friends.”

“What have you been doing lately for a living.”

The matter-of-fact question turned his heart sick. He had known that he would have to answer it before he could enter upon any employment; but he had always shrunk from formulating a plausible reply, weakly trusting to his mother-wit when the dreaded moment should come. Now his mother-wit deserted him. He could think of nothing but the past reality.

“I would rather tell you nothing about myself,” he said lamely.

The young partner shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly.

“Well, that’s your affair. But you see we can’t take a stranger into our office without his giving us some formal voucher for his honesty.”

Joyce looked at him appealingly, with glistening eyes, a new Moses on Mount Nebo. Only then did he fully realise the utter hopelessness of his position. The veriest office-boy needed a certificate of character. He had none.

The partner, clean-shaven, ruddy-cheeked, was lounging against the mantel-piece, hands in pockets, a whimsical smile playing around the comers of his mouth. His speech, though business-like, was kindly. He looked a gentleman. Joyce was seized with a mad, despairing impulse. He flushed to the roots of his hair, clenched his hands by his sides and advanced an involuntary step towards his interlocutor.

“I will tell you the truth,” he cried breathlessly. “I must find work soon or I shall starve. Give it to me and I will work night and day for you. I took a double first at Oxford. I practised as a solicitor. I lived beyond my means and misappropriated trust-money. I could not pay it back. My name was struck off the rolls and I had two years’ hard labour. I have been looking for work every day for five months. I am not such a fool as to risk that hell again. For God’s sake give me a chance and set me on my feet again.” His voice rang with the agony of entreaty. His lips quivered. When he ceased speaking he was shaking from head to foot.

The young man shifted the crossing of his feet and put up an eyeglass that had been dangling on his waistcoat.

“Well, you have pretty damned cheek, I must say!” he remarked, with a drawl.

Joyce stared at him for a moment stupidly, and then turned away without a word, crushed and humiliated to his soul. Round and round the rectangular well-staircase he went, dizzy with the reaction. He could knock at no more doors. The names seemed to swell large and to jeer at him as he passed. A burst of laughter from two men, issuing from some office above, echoed and rattled down the staircase and jarred upon every nerve of his body. He quickened his pace to a run, and did not stop until he reached the sweltering street. White and faint he leant against the wall, vaguely conscious of the ceaselessly hurrying mass that passed him by. After a minute or two he recovered self-possession enough to move onwards with the westward stream on the pavement. His quest of work was abandoned. He could only feel sickening regret for having given way to his insane impulse and shrink from the echoing tones of the other man’s cynical contempt. The last shred of his self-respect was torn away. He seemed to be the naked gaol-bird before those thousand eyes that glanced upon him. The idea grew into morbid exaggeration. A man or woman making way for him to pass appeared to be shrinking from the soil of his touch. Every policeman was identifying him. A penny-toy man by the Mansion House, who had taken off his cap and was scratching a closely-cropped head, grinned at him with the familiarity of an old acquaintance.

It became unbearable. He fled into a public-house in Cheapside and ordered a glass of whisky. The spirit ran through his veins comfortingly. He drank another, and went out into the street. Soon the spirit, acting on an empty stomach, dulled his senses and provoked a vague suggestion of debauch as the only consoler. In the days of his vanity Joyce had known the flush of wine on joyous nights, but drunkenness had always been hateful to him. Yet now, in his morbid state, the temptation was irresistible. He went from tavern to tavern with dull, stupid recklessness, cognisant only of the motive to drink and of his own mechanical personality. At last, staggering out of a public-house in Fleet Street, he tripped at the threshold and fell insensible on the pavement.

When he recovered consciousness it was quite dark. For a few moments he did not seek to discover where he was. But a chance movement caused him nearly to fall from where he lay, and he started to a sitting posture. His feet touched the ground sooner than he expected; the slight shock completed his awakening. Where was he? He stretched out his hand and felt the wall. It was stone. Stone, too, was the floor, as he found by stamping his foot. Then the truth burst upon him with indescribable terror. It was the cell of a police station. Although his head swam and his eyeballs ached, the flight of the discovery had thoroughly sobered him. It was the final calamity and degradation of the day. He was in prison again. He would again have to put on the hateful clothes and cower beneath the warder’s glance. Once more he would have to go through that dreadful ignominy. Exaggerating the consequences of his misdemeanour, he conjured up all the horrors of his previous term. A sense of utter self-loathing swelled within him like a nausea. He crouched on the narrow bench, holding his hair in a feverish grasp. The gaol had got him, body and soul. It was all that he was fit for.

An hour passed. Then the door opened and a policeman appeared in the light of the passage. Joyce looked up at him haggardly.

“Oh, you’re all right now, are you? Better come up and see the Inspector.”

Joyce staggered to his feet and clutched the policeman’s supporting arm.

“I was in great trouble,” he said hoarsely. “And then the heat—an empty stomach—a few glasses knocked me over.”

“Explain that upstairs,” replied the other. “Bless you, it ’ll be all square.”

Brought before the Inspector, he pulled himself together and pleaded his cause with an intensity that amused the officials. They could see nothing tragic in a “drunk and incapable.”

“Very well,” said the Inspector at last. “I see it was an accident. Call it heat-apoplexy. I sha’n’t charge you. You had better get home to bed.”

Joyce grew faint with the revulsion of feeling, and steadied himself by the iron railing. One of the men took him to the door, hailed a passing cab and helped him in. At first, ill and dizzy as he was, he felt the animal’s instinctive joy in suddenly regained liberty. The non-fulfilment of his agonising forebodings filled him with a wondering sense of relief. But this did not last long. Despair and self-abhorrence resumed their hold upon him, causing him to shiver in the cab as with an ague.

He crawled upstairs to his attic, and after having procured some food, of which he ate as much as he could swallow, he went to bed and fell into a heavy sleep. In the middle of the night he woke with a start. The recollection of his engagement with Yvonne Latour had penetrated through the sub-consciousness of half-awakening. He uttered a cry of dismay.

All the previous evening and all that morning he had thought of the promised visit. To sit in a lady’s room, to live for a moment a bit of the old life, to forget his pariahdom in Yvonne’s welcoming smile, to have the comfort of her exquisite pity—the prospect had rendered him almost buoyant during the early part of his round. But the pain and fever of after-events had driven her from his mind. Now, in his suffering state, it seemed as if he had lost an offered corner of Paradise, rejected the one hand that was stretched out to save him from perdition. He lay awake many hours. At last, toward dawn, he fell asleep again and did not wake till mid-day.

He rose, rang for his breakfast, which was brought him, as usual, on a tray, by the slatternly maid-of-all-work. He was still feeling prostrated in mind and body. Having eaten what he could, he drew up the blind to look at the day. The fine weather was still lasting. But he felt no desire to go out. What was the use? Judging by the lesson of yesterday it would be futile to continue his search for employment. As he turned away from the window, he caught sight of his white haggard face and bloodshot eyes in the mirror, and he shrank back, as though it revealed to him the miserable weakness of his soul. Then he threw himself half-dressed upon the bed, and there he remained, abandoning himself to the hopeless inaction of defeat, and eating his heart out in remorse for the shipwreck he had made of his life.

He did not pose before himself as a victim to circumstance. Could he have done so, he might have found some poor consolation. His criminal folly lay as much upon his soul as its punishment. Again, it had not been a grand stroke of villainy requiring for its execution a masterly coolness and genius for which he might at least have had an intellectual admiration. But it had been of the same petty sort as that of the shop-boy led astray by low turf associates, who pilfers day by day from his master’s till, hoping the luck will turn and enable him to replace the stolen shillings. The difference had been merely one of degree. His operations had been on a larger scale, his vices more fastidious, his circle of loose friends more aristocratic. But he had had the same contemptible motives for his crime, and the same contemptible excuses. He spared himself no arrow of self-scorn.

Latterly, through sheer weariness, he had grown apathetic, taking his self-abasement as one of the conditions of life. A man is not physiologically capable of continuous outburst. But now the iron had entered deep into his soul, causing him to writhe in torment.

What would be the end? The question haunted him, and yet it seemed scarcely worth consideration. There was no employment to be obtained by such as he. He would eke out his small capital as far as possible, and when that was exhausted, he could put an end to his worthless life. Or would his cowardice drag him down among the class of habitual criminals, lead him to crime as a means of livelihood? He shuddered, remembering his short spell of agony in the cell of yesterday.

The hours passed. Towards evening he dressed himself and went out to a dingy Italian restaurant near Victoria station, where he usually dined. On coming out again into the street he hesitated for some time as to what he should do next. He thought of Yvonne with wistful longing, but had not the courage to go and seek her. The sense of degradation was too strong upon him. He shrank with morbid sensitiveness from taking advantage of her guilelessness by bringing his contamination into her presence. For, paradoxical as it may seem, an instinctive pride still remained in the man. Had he chosen to lay it aside, doubtless more than one of his former friends would have consented to receive him on some sort of terms of acquaintanceship. But he had sought out none, and if chance brought him into sight of a familiar face in the street, he effaced himself and hurried on. Yvonne was the only figure out of the past with whom he had communicated. And now he had cut himself adrift from her.

After a few undecided turns up and down the pavement, he directed his steps mechanically to a customary haunt of his, the billiard-room of a public-house in Westminster. It was better than the wearying streets and the choking solitude of his attic. A couple of shabby men in dingy shirt-sleeves were playing at the table. On the raised divan, in the gloom of the walls, sat a silent company of lookers-on. With a group of these, Joyce exchanged nods, and took his place sombrely among them. They were a depressed, out-at-elbows crew, who came here night after night, speaking little, drinking less, and never playing billiards at all. They watched the game, now and then applauded, oftener condoled with the loser than congratulated the winner. They formed an orderly and appreciative gallery, and set, as it were, a tone of decorum in the room; and for this reason their presence was not discouraged by the landlord. Eight was their average number. They were mostly men in the prime of life, and belonged, as far as one could judge by their voluntary confidences, to the obscure fringes of journalism, the stage, and independence. Those who occupied the last position lived chiefly on their wives. There was a decayed medical student who did Heaven knows what for a living, and a red-headed, vulgar man, who gave out that he had thrown up a country rectorship, through conscientious scruples. Differing widely as they did in personality, yet they retained one common characteristic. Failure seemed written on each man’s face. A kind of mutual affinity had drawn them together. To Joyce’s cynical humour it appeared as if something more than mere chance had caused him to stumble upon them one evening two months before.

“I’m afraid I have left my ’baccy at home,” said the man sitting next to Joyce, who was filling his pipe. “Thank you very much. A change in tobacco is very gratifying at times to the palate.”

He was a man of singular appearance. The bones in his face were very large, the flesh scanty; his nose hooked, his eyebrows black and meeting. His long upper-lip and his chin were shaven; but he wore thick black mutton-chop whiskers which contrasted oddly with a bush of whitening hair above his temples and at the back of his head. Whether he was bald or not, no one ever knew, as he always retained his hat fixed in one never-changing, respectable angle. This hat was very, very old, an extravagantly curled silk hat of the masher days in the early eighties. But the most striking feature of his costume consisted in a long thick Chesterfield overcoat which he obviously wore without coat or waistcoat beneath. In the sultry August weather the sight of him made the beholder perspire. Although there was no trace of linen at his wrists or down the arms as far as one could see, a dirty frayed collar and a shirt-front adorned with a straight black tie appeared above the tightly buttoned overcoat. Joyce knew him by the name of Noakes.

He looked at Joyce, as he spoke, out of pale-blue, unspeculative eyes, and returned the tobacco-pouch. “You had better take another fill or two, while you are about it,” said Joyce.

“I don’t like to trespass upon your generosity,” said Noakes. But he helped himself plentifully, tying up the tobacco in his pocket-handkerchief. They smoked on during a long silence, broken only by the click of the billiard-balls, the monotonous cry of the marker, and occasional murmurs of applause. The air was heavy with drink and tobacco-smoke, fresh and stale.

“I must be getting back to work,” said Noakes at last.

The word roused Joyce from the lethargy into which he had fallen. He had never associated Noakes with definite employment. For a moment he envied him.

“I wish to heaven I could,” he said.

“A man of your attainments,” replied Noakes, respectfully, “ought never to be at a loss. Now I should say you have been to a public school?”

Joyce nodded.

“And the university?”

Joyce did not reply, but Noakes went on: “Yes; one can see it. Somehow a man of acute observation can always tell. I remember your correcting me the other night when I spoke of Plato’s dramatic unities. I looked up the matter in the British Museum, and found that you were right in attributing them to Aristotle. As I said before, a man of your education ought to have no difficulty.”

“You might suggest something,” said Joyce, with a shade of irony.

“Authorship.”

“Are you an author?”

“With all due modesty, I may say that I am,” returned Noakes, gravely. “I don’t find it very remunerative, but I attribute that solely to the deficiencies in my education.”

“What do you write?” asked Joyce, interested in spite of himself in this odd, pathetic figure.

“I have adopted two branches of the profession—one, the literary advertisement; the other, popular fiction.”

He drew a halfpenny evening paper from his pocket, and, designating a half-column with his thumb, handed it to Joyce. It was headlined “Nihilism in Russia,” opened with an account of Siberian horrors, and ended, of course, with somebody’s pills.

“I always pride myself upon there being more literary quality in my work than is usually given to that class of thing,” he remarked complacently, while Joyce idly ran through the column. “And in my fiction I always try to keep the best models before me, Stevenson and Mayne Reid. I happen to have a copy of one of my latest works in my pocket. Perhaps it might interest you to glance through it. In return for the tobacco,—with the author’s compliments.”

Joyce received into his hands a thin volume in a gaudy paper wrapper. It was entitled “The Doom of the Floating Fiend.” The printing, in packed double-column, and the paper were execrable. The author’s name did not figure beneath the title. From the most cursory glance through the pages, Joyce could see they were deluged in blood.

“I shall be glad to read it,” he said, mendaciously, putting it into his pocket.

“If you find anything noteworthy of criticism in my style, I should feel grateful for you to tell me,” said Noakes. “My ambition is to write some day for a more cultured public. I have a pastoral idyll that I shall write when I have time. But, you see, there is a continuous market for books of adventure.”

He spoke in a toneless, even voice, without a shade of enthusiasm or regret appearing in his eyes.

“Do you think it would be of any use for an outsider to try it—one not in the swim with the publishers?” asked Joyce, curiously.

“Certainly. But one needs the imaginative faculty. If you ’ll look at my forehead, you will see I have it firmly developed. Allow me to look at yours. Yes; I see it there. Once started, it is constant employment. They pay half a crown per thousand words. I do my three thousand a day.”

Noakes rose to depart.

“Thanks for the information,” said Joyce. “I may try my hand. Won’t you have a glass with me before you go?”

“No, thank you,” said Noakes. “I find stimulants interfere with brain-work. Good evening.”

Noakes gone, Joyce found himself next to the red-headed ex-rector, who was fast asleep, his dirty, pudgy fingers clasped in his lap. He remained, therefore, solitary, and after having looked for some time dejectedly at the three ever-clicking balls on the table, he went out again into the street.

Noakes’s hint had taken root in his mind. If that dilapidated man could maintain himself honestly by “popular fiction,” surely he could do so too. Off and on during the last five months he had striven to write an article or short story, but his mind had refused to work. The conviction that his intellect had been shattered during those two awful years had added to his despair. But now he told himself that this was work in which intellectual subtlety and fastidiousness would prove a hindrance. The one thing needful was imagination: also a terrible faculty for continuous quill-driving. To gain a livelihood there would have to be written daily stuff equal to three columns of the “Globe” newspaper. And seven-and-sixpence as the reward! A noble end, he thought bitterly to himself as he walked along, to the ambition of Stephen Chisely, double-first of New College, Oxford—to become a writer of “penny bloods.”

Still, the suggestion had acted as a stimulus. When he entered his room, he did not feel so broken and purposeless as when he had left it. The intellectual effort he had made whilst walking home in scheming out an experimental chapter had broken the spell of morbid introspection. As soon as he had lit the gas, he drew out writing materials, and, sitting before his dressing-table, began the scene of slaughter he had arranged. At the end of a couple of hours he found he had written two slips of one hundred and fifty words each. He regarded them ruefully. At that rate it would take him twenty hours a day to earn his seven-and-sixpence. The idea occurred to him to look at the “Doom of the Floating Fiend.” He read a few pages and then dropped the work hopelessly on to the floor. The instinct of the scholar and man of culture awakened in revolt. His mind would not be prostituted to stuff like that.

“Sooner death!” he said to himself, with whimsical bitterness. His own carefully elaborated efforts he tore up with a sigh. Then, tired out, he prepared to go to bed.

Suddenly, in the midst of his undressing, he caught sight, to his immense surprise, of a letter lying on his counterpane, where the maid of all work had carelessly thrown it. From whom could it be? Letters were things of an almost forgotten past. It was in a woman’s hand. Then he remembered he had given his address to Yvonne. The letter was from her, and ran:—

Joyce went to bed and slept the sound sleep of a jaded man. But the letter lay under his pillow.