his mother
died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic, remained on his
hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go away for six months,
and work harder than ever when he came back. He had no knack for
business, no head for figures, no dimmest insight into the mysteries of
commerce. He wanted to travel and write--those were his inmost longings.
And as the years dragged on, and he neared middle-age without making
any more money, or acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed
him. He tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired
that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not reach his
dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush up" for dinner,
and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe, while his sister droned
through the evening paper. Sometimes he spent an evening at the theatre;
or he dined out, or, more rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance or
two in quest of what is known as "pleasure." And in summer, when he
and Kate went to the sea-side for a month, he dozed through the days in
utter weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl--but what had
he to offer her, in God's name? She seemed to like him, and in common
decency he had to drop out of the running. Apparently no one
replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish, grayish,
philanthropic--yet how sweet she had been when he had first kissed her!
One more wasted life, he reflected...

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have sold his
soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN HIM--he could
not remember when it had not been his deepest-seated instinct. As the
years passed it became a morbid, a relentless obsession--yet with every
year the material conditions were more and more against it. He felt
himself growing middle-aged, and he watched the reflection of the
process in his sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been
pretty, and as full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial,
insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had no
resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive
functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him
to think of it--and to reflect that even now a little travel, a
little health, a little money, might transform her, make her young and
desirable... The chief fruit of his experience was that there is no such
fixed state as age or youth--there is only health as aga