t's no good. Ought to have stuck to
newspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Had
another frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go back
to the old grind, damn it."

He wept softly, full of pity for his hard case.

"Very miserable," he murmured.

He came forward a step into the room, lurched, and retreated to the safe
support of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm was shot
through by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was back again
in her armour of indifference.

"Go to bed, Gerald," she said. "You'll feel better in the morning."

Perhaps some inkling of how he was going to feel in the morning worked
through to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his manner
took on a deeper melancholy.

"May not be alive in the morning," he said solemnly. "Good mind to
end it all. End it all!" he repeated with the beginning of a sweeping
gesture which was cut off abruptly as he clutched at the friendly door.

Sally was not in the mood for melodrama.

"Oh, go to bed," she said impatiently. The strange frozen indifference
which had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place a
growing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degrading
himself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in the
man. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed his
personality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation she
felt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change had
come over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing in
distress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourning
over the prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal to
her--a fact which the sufferer noted and commented upon.

"You're very unsymp... unsympathetic," he complained.

"I'm sorry," said Sally. She walked briskly to the door and gave it a
push. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into the
passage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundations
of whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released the
handle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own door
open before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, having
watched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with the
intention of terminating this disturbing night by going to sleep.

Almost immediately she changed her mind. Sleep was out