in some manner, and so driven her to become self-supporting.

Perhaps hardly likely: the hypothesis was none the less quite
plausible; a thing had happened, within P. Sybarite's knowledge of
Brian Shaynon....

Even if George's romance were true only in part, these were wretched
circumstances for a girl of gentle birth and rearing to adopt. It was
really a shocking boarding-house. P. Sybarite had known it intimately
for ten years; use had made him callous to its shortcomings; but he
was not yet so far gone that he could forget how unwholesome and
depressing it must seem to one accustomed to better things. He could
remember most vividly how he had loathed it for weeks, months, and
years after the tide of evil fortunes had cast him upon its crumbling
brownstone stoop (even in that distant day, crumbling).

Now, however ... P. Sybarite realised suddenly that habit had
instilled into his bosom a sort of mean affection for the grim and
sordid place. Time had made him sib to its spirit, close to its
niggard heart. Scarcely a nook or corner of it with which he was not
on terms of the most intimate acquaintance. In the adjoining room a
deserted woman had died by her own hand; her moans, filtered through
the dividing wall, had summoned P. Sybarite--too late. The double
front room on the same floor harboured an amiable couple whose
sempiternal dissensions only his tact and persistence ever served to
still. The other hall-bedroom had housed for many years a dipsomaniac
whose periodic orgies had cost P. Sybarite many a night of bedside
vigil. On the floor below lived a maiden lady whose quenchless hopes
still centred about his amiable person. Downstairs in the clammy
parlour he had whiled away unnumbered hours assisting at dreary