was at home by midnight, for the beer and the bravura ceased to flow
at the witching hour. Then he lounged in the easy chair, gradually and
not unconsciously shedding all the worldly influences that had been
clothing him as with a hair-shirt even since he first went forth that
morning. Safely he sank into the silence of the place. Every breath he
drew was balm; every moment healing. So he passed into the silence,
enfolded by invisible arms that led him gently to his pillow where he
sank to sleep with the trustful resignation of a tired babe.

If this routine was ever varied it was a variation with a vengeance.
"From grave to gay, from lively to severe" might have been engraved upon
his escutcheon. It chanced that the family motto was Festina Lente; this
also was appropriate; had he not all his life made haste slowly? For
this very reason he had been accounted one of the laziest of his kind;
his indolence was a byword merely because he did not throw himself into
an easy chair at the Club, of an evening, and bewail his fate; because
he did not puff and blow and talk often of the work he had
accomplished, was accomplishing, or hastening forward to accomplishment.
With all his faults, thank heaven, that sin cannot be charged against
him.

III.

BALM OF HURT WOUNDS

He was scrimping in every way; his case was growing desperate. The
books, the pictures, the bric-a-brac so precious in his eyes, he was
loath to part with; moreover, he was well aware that if he were to
trundle his effects down to an auction-room they would not bring him
enough to cover his expenses for a single week. "Better to starve in the
midst of my household gods," thought he, "than to part with them for the
sake of prolonging this misery." The situation was in some respects
serio-comic. While he seemed to have everything, he really had almost
nothing; he was in a certain sense at the mercy of his friends and
dependent upon them.

As the dinner hour approached, Paul was called upon to make choice of
the character of his table-talk; there were several standing invitations
to dine at the houses of old friends, and these were a boon to him, for
at such houses the homeless fellow felt much at home. There were special
invitations, sometimes an embarrassing profusion of them--all kindly,
some persistent, and some even imperative; thus the dinner was a fixed
fact; the mood alone was to be consulted in his choice of a table and
after all how much of