with half a sovereign a day--don't you think?"

"Not very much, if you're particular about your wine."

"Wine doesn't matter. Honest ale and Scotch whisky will serve well
enough. Understand me; I'm not going in for debauchery, and I'm not
going to play the third-rate swell. There's no enjoyment in making a
beast of oneself, and none for me in strutting about the streets
like an animated figure out of a tailor's window. I want to know the
taste of free life, human life. I want to forget that I ever sat at
a desk, drawing to scale--drawing damned machines. I want to----"

He checked himself. Narramore looked at him with curiosity.

"It's a queer thing to me, Hilliard," he remarked, when his friend
turned away, "that you've kept so clear of women. Now, anyone would
think you were just the fellow to get hobbled in that way."

"I daresay," muttered the other. "Yes, it _is_ a queer thing. I have
been saved, I suppose, by the necessity of supporting my relatives.
I've seen so much of women suffering from poverty that it has got me
into the habit of thinking of them as nothing but burdens to a man."

"As they nearly always are."

"Yes, nearly always."

Narramore pondered with his amiable smile; the other, after a
moment's gloom, shook himself free again, and talked with growing
exhilaration of the new life that had dawned before him.