through a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone else
concerned to tears or Cassandra-like forebodings. Sometimes they
sober down in after-life and become uninteresting, forgetting that
they were ever lords of anything; sometimes Fate plays royally into
their hands, and they do great things in a spacious manner, and are
thanked by Parliaments and the Press and acclaimed by gala-day
crowds. But in most cases their tragedy begins when they leave
school and turn themselves loose in a world that has grown too
civilised and too crowded and too empty to have any place for them.
And they are very many.

Henry Greech had made an end of biting small sandwiches, and
settled down like a dust-storm refreshed, to discuss one of the
fashionably prevalent topics of the moment, the prevention of
destitution.

"It is a question that is only being nibbled at, smelt at, one
might say, at the present moment," he observed, "but it is one that
will have to engage our serious attention and consideration before
long. The first thing that we shall have to do is to get out of
the dilettante and academic way of approaching it. We must collect
and assimilate hard facts. It is a subject that ought to appeal to
all thinking minds, and yet, you know, I find it surprisingly
difficult to interest people in it."

Francesca made some monosyllabic response, a sort of sympathetic
grunt which was meant to indicate that she was, to a certain
extent, listening and appreciating. In reality she was reflecting
that Henry possibly found it difficult to interest people in any
topic that he enlarged on. His talents lay so thoroughly in the