bankrupt and humiliated from Australia, ending existence in such
pennilessness that the parish must give him a pauper's grave. What did
it matter where a man lay, so that he slept--slept--slept? Surely with
one's brains scattered one would sleep soundly anywhere.

He had come to the house the night before, dressed shabbily with the
pitiable respectability of a defeated man. He had entered droopingly
with bent shoulders and hopeless hang of head. In his own sphere he was
a man who held himself well. He had let fall a few dispirited sentences
when he had engaged his back room from the woman of the house, and she
had recognized him as one of the luckless. In fact, she had hesitated a
moment before his unreliable look until he had taken out money from his
pocket and paid his rent for a week in advance. She would have that at
least for her trouble, he had said to himself. He should not occupy the
room after to-morrow. In his own home some days would pass before his
household began to make inquiries. He had told his servants that he was
going over to Paris for a change. He would be safe and deep in his
pauper's grave a week before they asked each other why they did not hear
from him. All was in order. One of the mocking agonies was that living
was done for. He had ceased to live. Work, pleasure, sun, moon, and
stars had lost their meaning. He stood and looked at the most radiant
loveliness of land and sky and sea and felt nothing. Success brought
greater wealth each day without stirring a pulse of pleasure, even in
triumph. There was nothing left but the awful days and awful nights to
which he knew physicians could give their scientific name, but had
no healing for. He had gone far enough. He would go no farther.
To-morrow it would have been over long hours. And there would have been
no public declaiming over the humiliating pitifulness of his end. And
what did it matter?