more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed
him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so
tired that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not
reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush
up" for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while
his sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an
evening at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed
off with an acquaintance or two in quest of what is known as
"pleasure." And in summer, when he and Kate went to the sea-side for
a month, he dozed through the days in utter weariness. Once he fell
in love with a charming girl--but what had he to offer her, in God's
name? She seemed to like him, and in common decency he had to drop
out of the running. Apparently no one replaced him, for she never
married, but grew stoutish, grayish, philanthropic--yet how sweet
she had been when he had first kissed her! One more wasted life, he
reflected...

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold
his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was _in
him_--he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated
instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a relentless
obsession--yet with every year the material conditions were more and
more against it. He felt himself growing middle-aged, and he watched
the reflection of the process in his sister's wasted face. At
eighteen she had been pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now
she was sour, trivial, insignificant--she had missed her chance of
life. And she had no resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply
for the primitive functions she had been denied the chance to
fulfil! It exasperated him to think of it--and to reflect that even
now a little travel, a little health, a little money, might