sit with that singularly sweet and singularly pathetic smile on his lips (a
smile which seemed afraid of its right to be there, as if always dreading a
rebuff), playing his invariable after-dinner game of cards. Friends would
come in during the hour before closing time; and the girl, her game of
cards finished, would quietly disappear, leaving him with hardly more than
the desire to kill another night as swiftly as possible.

Meanwhile she and the mother knew that the fragile young man who dined
there so quietly every day way apt to be quite another sort of person after
he had been three hours outside. It was only when his life seemed to have
been irretrievably ruined that Dowson quite deliberately abandoned himself
to that craving for drink, which was doubtless lying in wait for him in his
blood, as consumption was also; it was only latterly, when he had no longer
any interest in life, that he really wished to die. But I have never known
him when he could resist either the desire or the consequences of drink.
Sober, he was the most gentle, in manner the most gentlemanly of men;
unselfish to a fault, to the extent of weakness; a delightful companion,
charm itself. Under the influence of drink, he became almost literally
insane, certainly quite irresponsible. He fell into furious and unreasoning
passions; a vocabulary unknown to him at other times sprang up like a
whirlwind; he seemed always about to commit some act of absurd violence.
Along with that forgetfulness came other memories. As long as he was
conscious of himself, there was but one woman for him in the world, and for
her he had an infinite tenderness and an infinite respect. When that face
faded from him, he saw all the other faces, and he saw no more difference
than between sheep and sheep. Indeed, that curious love of the sordid, so
common an affectation of the modern decadent, and with him so genuine, grew
upon him, and dragged him into more and more sorry corners of a life which
was never exactly "gay" to him. His father, when he died, left him in
possession of an old dock, where for a time he lived in a mouldering house,