a serious annoyance.

'If that's true, I'll go and live for a month in Limerick.'

'It would be cheaper to join a Socialist club in the East End. But just
tell me how you stand. How long can you hold out in these aristocratic
lodgings?'

'Till Christmas. I'm ashamed to say how I've got the money, so don't
ask. I reached London with empty pockets. And I'll tell you one thing I
have learnt, Munden. There's no villainy, no scoundrelism, no baseness
conceivable, that isn't excused by want of money. I understand the whole
"social question." The man who has never felt the perspiration come out
on his forehead in asking himself how he is going to keep body and soul
together, has no right to an opinion on the greatest question of the
day.'

'What particular scoundrelism or baseness have you committed?' asked the
other.

Tarrant averted his eyes.

'I said I could understand such things.'

'One sees that you have been breathed upon by democracy.'

'I loathe the word and the thing even more than I did, which is saying a
good deal.'

'Be it so. You say you are going to work?'

'Yes, I have come back to work. Even now, it's difficult to realise that
I must work or starve. I understand how fellows who have unexpectedly
lost their income go through life sponging on relatives and friends.
I understand how an educated man goes sinking through all the social
grades, down to the common lodging-house and the infirmary. And I
honestly believe there's only one thing that saves me from doing
likewise.'

'And what's that?'

'I can't tell you--not yet, at all events.'

'I always thought you a very fine specimen of the man born to do
nothing,' said Munden, with that smile which permitted him a surprising
candour in conversation.

'And you were quite right,' returned Tarrant, with a laugh. 'I am a born
artist in indolence. It's the pity of pities that circumstances will
frustrate Nature's purpose.'

'You think you can support yourself by journalism?'

'I must try.--Run your eye over that.'

He took from the table a slip of manuscript, headed, 'A Reverie in Wall
Street.' Munden read it, sat thoughtful for a moment, and laughed.

'Devilish savage. Did you write it after a free lunch?'

'Wrote it this morning. Shall I try one of the evening papers with
it,--or one of the weeklies?'

Munden suggested a few alterations, and mentioned the journal which he
thought might possibly find room for such a bit of satire.

'Done any