handkerchief.

"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional
to be worth telling. Some of us go up, you know. Some of us go down.
You're doing pretty well, I hear."

"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and
am trying to stick there. But it is of you I want to talk. Can't I do
anything for you?"

We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment. He thrust his face
forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.

"Do I look like a man you could do anything for?" he said.

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that
might seize hold of him.

"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm
comfortable enough. We take life easily down here where I am. We've no
disappointments."

"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily. "You had
talent. You would have won with ordinary perseverance."

"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. "I suppose I
hadn't the grit. I think if somebody had believed in me it might have
helped me. But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And
when a man loses that, he's like a balloon with the gas let out."