worth more
than any wheelwork."

And, always, his inventive imagination built on without respite, pulled
down, built up again.

His daily success at the Hippodrome did not divert him from the end he had
in view. "Bridging the Abyss," for him, was but a means of making money,
to enable him to climb higher. He thought of nothing but that: getting on,
climbing higher; and this obsession of the future made him scorn or rather
overlook the temptations of the stage. He would only have had to choose
among the lot. All, down to the great Parisienne, would have jumped at a
champagne supper with Jimmy, the famous bill-topper, the man who looked
like the swells in the front boxes and who made such a "pile." But Jimmy
knew all about that: he left the theater in the quietest way, took a glass
of ale with the boys or girls at the Crown, had a light supper and went
home. And sometimes a frenzy for work made him rush to his table, as
though the band of the Hippodrome were shaking his nerves:

"Get to work," he would growl, "get to work, cheesy brain!"

"But, Pa, I can't!"

"But you've got to, my little siree!" he insisted, with a flickering
smile.

And he read treatises, made diagrams; took up his compasses again ... or
else stayed as he was, with his chin in his hand, plunged in his thoughts,
his mind soaring above London.... He seemed to fly over the huge city,
whose distant rumbling rose up to him, similar to the roar of the sea....
Oh, he would succeed, he knew he would! And he felt within himself an
increasing will of so tenacious a character that he could have swung it,
so it seemed to him, like a battering-ram against the obstacle to be
overcome and then:

"Damn it!" he would growl, banging his fist on the table. "That thief in
the night! What a sweet wife he got hold of! Poor Lily, to fall into such
hands! Ah, yes, she would have done better to stay at home!"

And Jimmy got to work again, to forget Lily; and he kept on thinking of
her:

"Damn that girl!"

What on earth did he think of her for ... when he didn't love her, after
all?

Even during his triumphal tour of the Eastern and Western Trust, that
Lily, whom he did not love, haunted his memory. At first, he hoped to
forget her in his life of excessive activity. And he saw so many theaters,
as many as Lily did in England: so many artistes, on so many stages ...
faces whom he had already met in England: fair wigs, scarlet legs, boyish
voices; "Roofers," "broth