He was not the brilliant Chris of the previous night, but a down~cast being whose pale face and heavy eyes seemed to reflect Vance’s own distress. He held out his hand in silence, and Vance asked if he had breakfasted.

Chris grimaced a refusal. “But a brandy-and-soda? Thanks. Shall I telephone the order?”

He did so without waiting for the answer; then he threw himself into the one armchair in the room, lit a cigarette, and looked absently about him, as though hardly conscious of Vance’s presence. “Not a bad place you’ve got here.” He puffed at his cigarette, and added suddenly: “Funny chap, that Duke of Spartivento. Who do you suppose he’s out to marry?”

“I don’t know — nor much care,” Vance replied, with a quick twinge of apprehension.

“Well — Mrs. Glaisher! Didn’t you see him dancing with her last night? I suppose he noticed I was rather chummy with Alders, and might be likely to know something about the lady’s affairs; so he got me off into a corner to ask about her investments — of course on the pretext that he represents a stock-broking firm. Up-to-date fellow, the Duke. Naturally I told him I knew all about it; you ought to have seen his eyes as I piled up the millions! I wouldn’t have missed it for a good deal.” Chris’s own eyes brightened with the appearance of the brandy-and-soda, and he reached out to pour himself a stiff draught.

Vance watched him impatiently. At the moment the boy inspired him only with contempt. “Well, suppose we get down to business now,” he suggested, as Chris leaned back in silent enjoyment of his drink.

The word seemed to strike a tender nerve. The blood flooded up under Chris’s sallow skin, as it had the night before when he caught sight of Vance. “Business —?”

“Didn’t you tell me you wanted me to help you with your article on Blemer?”

“Oh — THAT?” Vance caught his look of relief. “Why, yes, of course . . . Blemer. . .” With pleasurable deliberation Chris helped himself to another brandy-and-soda. “I haven’t written the first line of that article on Blemer.”

“No?”

“Nor of the article on you — ”

“No?”

“No — no — no! Damn it, Weston, I suppose you knew from the beginning that I never would.” Chris jumped up and began to move uneasily about the room. He halted before Vance. “And it was all a yarn, you know, what I told you last night about the ‘Windmill’ having wired me to come here and interview Blemer. The purest kind of a lie. Much the ‘Windmill’ cares! They washed their hands of me long ago. I daresay you guessed that too. You knew I’d taken the money you lent me to go to London with, and come here to blow it in — didn’t you?”

Vance was silent, and Chris rushed on with twitching lips: “I daresay you heard of my being here from Alders or somebody, and came to look me up and see how I’d invested your loan, eh?” He gave a laugh. “Well, the last penny of it went up the spout last night.”

“It wasn’t a loan,” said Vance.

Chris broke off with a stare. “It wasn’t —?”

“I hate loans — to myself or others. The day after you told me you wanted to go to London I looked you up to tell you so. You’d already gone, and I didn’t know where to write; but the money was a present, so there’s an end of it. It’s your own look-out how you spent it; you don’t even owe me an explanation.”

Chris received this in silence. He had grown very pale, and his lower lip trembled. “I say, Weston — .” He turned away and throwing himself down sideways in the armchair buried his face in his crossed arms. “Oh, God, oh, God!” It was such an explosion of misery as had burst from him when he had confessed to Vance his desperate desire to get away from Oubli. Vance’s contempt gave way to pity; but he hardly knew how to put it into words without touching on a live nerve. Chris looked up again. “Well, I don’t suppose you’re much surprised, are you? I daresay you knew from the first that I wasn’t serious about the ‘Windmill’.”

“No; I didn’t. And I still believe you meant to go to London.”

“You do?” The mockery in Chris’s eyes vanished in a look of boyish compunction. “Well, you’re right; I did. But just as I was getting my ticket there was a fellow next to me taking his for Nice. And the sun was shining . . . and I hate fog and cold . . . they shrivel me up . . . Oh, Weston, what am I to do? I can’t write — I CAN’T. I can only dream of it. I knew I’d never earn enough in London to pay back your twenty pounds, and that with any kind of luck I might give myself a month’s holiday here and settle my debt besides. So I came . . . and I did make money enough, or nearly; only like a fool I blew in part of it the day before yesterday. And last night I went back to try and recoup, and come to you with the cash in my pocket; and I struck my first run of bad luck, and got cleaned out.” He gave another of his shrill laughs, stood up and limped across to the mirror over the mantel. “Pretty sight I am . . . I look like an old print of ‘The Gamester’. By God, I wish I was an old print — I might sell myself for a pound or two!” He turned toward Vance. “The fact is, I was meant to be a moment’s ornament, and you all insist on my being a permanent institution,” he said with a whimsical grin.

“Well, you’ve ornamented several moments by this time,” said Vance. “The best thing you can do now is to pack up and come back with me.”

“Back — to Oubli?”

“Of course. All that rot about not writing — why, nobody can write who doesn’t set his teeth and dig himself in. Your mistake was ever imagining it was fun. Come along; you’ll write fast enough when you have to.”

Chris stood twirling a cigarette between his fingers. His hands shook like an old man’s. “I say, Weston — you’ve been awfully decent. And I wonder if you won’t understand — if you won’t help me out this once . . . Not a big loan; just a few pounds. It’ll be the last time . . . After that I’ll go back.”

“You’ll come back now. Your mother’s out of her senses worrying about you; it’s not fair to keep her in suspense.”

Chris dropped down into the chair again, limp and expressionless as a marionette with broken wires. “Look here,” Vance began — but the other interrupted him. He knew all that Vance was going to say, he declared; hadn’t he said it to himself a thousand times? But he was sick of pretending that he ought to buckle down to work, that he oughtn’t to borrow money, that he ought to be kind to his parents, and not worry them out of their senses. What was the good of it all, when he didn’t happen to be made that way? Talk of ineffectual angels — there were ineffectual devils too, and he was one of them. Didn’t Vance suppose he knew what he was made for — to talk well, and make people laugh, and get asked out where there was jazz and fun and cards? Some millionaire’s hanger-on — that was what he was meant to be; and yet he wasn’t either, because he couldn’t stand being ordered about, or pretend to be amused by stupid people, or dazzled by vulgar asses, or any of the things you were expected to do in return for your keep. In his heart of hearts he’d rather slave in an editor’s office than nigger for rich morons as poor Alders did — an educated fellow, not half stupid, but who didn’t know how else to earn his living. For his part, he’d rather give himself a hypo and be done with it. . .

“You might try slaving in an editor’s office before you plump for the hypo,” Vance answered. His compassion was cooling off. The perpetual spring of energy bubbling up in him made such weakness and self-pity almost incomprehensible. He could understand the rich morons getting themselves privately electrocuted, he said; after a day or two in their company he always wondered why they didn’t. But to a man like Chris, with eyes and a brain, the mere everyday spectacle of life ought to. . .

“The wind on the heath?” Chris interpolated drily.

“Well, yes, damn it — the wind. . .” But the argument died on Vance’s lips. Life wasn’t like that to Chris’s decomposing intelligence. His eyes and his brain seemed to drain the beauty out of daily things; there was the bitter core of the enigma.

Vance laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Listen, old man; your people are awfully unhappy. Come home; we’ll see what can be done afterward.”

Chris looked up with heavy eyes. “Now — today?”

“By the next train. I can’t think why you’re not fed up with this sort of thing. I am.”

Chris sat staring down at his............