repaid her benefactors with
deception! What hopes could she yet cherish? In literature she was a
failure; the critics gave her few gleams of encouragement, while all her
acquaintances from Raphael downwards would turn and rend her, should she
dare declare herself. Nay, she was ashamed of herself for the mischief
she had wrought. No one in the world cared for her; she was quite alone.
The only man in whose breast she could excite love or the semblance of
it was a contemptible cad. And who was she, that she should venture to
hope for love? She figured herself as an item in a catalogue; "a little,
ugly, low-spirited, absolutely penniless young woman, subject to nervous
headaches." Her sobs were interrupted by a ghastly burst of
self-mockery. Yes, Levi was right. She ought to think herself lucky to
get him. Again, she asked herself what had existence to offer her.
Gradually her sobs ceased; she remembered to-night would be _Seder_
night, and her thoughts, so violently turned Ghetto-wards, went back to
that night, soon after poor Benjamin's death, when she sat before the
garret fire striving to picture the larger life of the future. Well,
this was the future.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ENDS OF A GENERATION.

The same evening Leonard James sat in the stalls of the Colosseum Music
Hall, sipping champagne and smoking a cheroot. He had not been to his
chambers (which were only round the corner) since the hapless interview
with Esther, wandering about in the streets and the clubs in a spirit
compounded of outraged dignity, remorse and recklessness. All men must
dine; and dinner at the _Flamingo Club_ soothed his wounded soul and
left only the recklessness, which is a sensation not lacking in
agreeableness. Through the rosy mists of the Burgundy there began to
surge up other faces than that cold pallid little face which had
hovered before him all the afternoon like a tantalizing phantom; at the
Chartreuse stage he began to wonder what hallucination, what aberration
of sense had overcome him, that he should have been stirred to his
depths and distressed so hugely. Warmer faces were these that swam
before him, faces fuller of the joy of life. The devil take all stuck-up
little saints!

About eleven o'clock, when the great ballet of _Venetia_ was over,
Leonard hurried round to the stage-door, saluted the door-keeper with a
friendly smile and a sixpence, and sent in his card to Miss Gladys
Wynne, on the chance that she might ha