Success that poisons many a baser mind
With thoughts of self, may lift--

but stopped there because, when he changed into another train, the
jerkier movement altered the rhythm into something more lyrical, and
he got somewhat confused between the two and ended by losing both.

He walked up the hill towards his tiny villa, hugging his secret and
anticipating with endless detail how he would break it to his wife. He
felt very proud and very happy. The half-mile trudge seemed like a few
yards.

He was a slim, rather insignificant figure of a man, neatly dressed,
the City clerk stamped plainly over all his person. He envied his
employer's burly six-foot stature, but comforted himself always with
the thought that he possessed in its place a certain delicacy that was
more becoming to a man of letters whom an adverse fate prevented from
being a regular minor poet. There was that touch of melancholy in his
fastidious appearance that suggested the atmosphere of frustrated
dreams. Only the firmness of his character and judgment decreed
against the luxury of longish hair; and he prided himself upon
remembering that although a poet at heart, he was outwardly a City
clerk and, as a strong man, must permit no foolish compromise.

His face on the whole was pleasing, and rather soft, yet, owing to
this warring of opposing inner forces, it was at the same time
curiously deceptive. Out of that dreamy, vague expression shot, when
least expected, the hard and practical judgment of the City--or vice
versa. But the whole was gentle--admirable quality for an audience,
since it invited confession and assured a gentle hearing. No harshness