not until he realized that I was his only hope of escaping a
sharp comedown from luxury to very modest comfort in a flat somewhere--not
until then did his wife send me an invitation to dinner. And I had not so
much as hinted that I wanted it.

I shall never forget the smallest detail of that dinner--it was a purely
"family" affair, only the Ellerslys and I. I can feel now the oppressive
atmosphere, the look as of impending sacrilege upon the faces of the old
servants; I can see Mrs. Ellersly trying to condescend to be "gracious,"
and treating me as if I were some sort of museum freak or menagerie
exhibit. I can see Anita. She was like a statue of snow; she spoke not
a word; if she lifted her eyes, I failed to note it. And when I was
leaving--I with my collar wilted from the fierce, nervous strain I had been
enduring--Mrs. Ellersly, in that voice of hers into which I don't believe
any shade of a real human emotion ever penetrated, said: "You must come to
see us, Mr. Blacklock. We are always at home after five."

I looked at Miss Ellersly. She was white to the lips now, and the spangles
on her white dress seemed bits of ice glittering there. She said nothing;
but I knew she felt my look, and that it froze the ice the more closely in
around her heart. "Thank you," I muttered.

I stumbled in the hall; I almost fell down the broad steps. I stopped at
the first bar and took three drinks in quick succession. I went on down the
avenue, breathing like an exhausted swimmer. "I'll give her up!" I cried
aloud, so upset was I.

I am a man of impulse; but I have trained myself not to be a
_creature_ of impulse, at least not in matters of importance. Without
that patient and painful schooling, I shouldn't have got where I now am;
probably I'd still be blacking boots, or sheet-writing for some bookmaker,
or clerking it for some broker. Before I got to my rooms, the night air and
my habit of the "sober second thought" had cooled me back to rationality.

"I want her, I need her," I was saying to myself. "I am worthier of her
than are those mincing manikins she has been bred to regard as men. She is
for me--she belongs to me. I'll abandon her to no smirking puppet who'd
wear her as a donkey would a diamond. Why should I do myself and her an
injury simply because she has been too badly brought up to know her own
interest?"

And now I see all the smooth frauds, all the weak people who never have
purposes or passions worthy of the name