ant itself to bear the fruit of action in
the fierce light of reality.

In Traill's mind the idea was sown when he stood outside the office
of Bonsfield & Co. in King Street. The soil was ready then--hungry
for the seed. It fell lightly--unnoticed--into the subconscious
strata of his mind. He had not even been aware of its existence. Then,
with the woman who had accompanied him to his rooms, came the
husbandry of circumstance. She fed the seed. She watered it. Before
her foot had finished tapping on the wooden staircase, before the
street and the thousand lights had swallowed her up again, his mind
had grasped the knowledge of the need that was within him.

On Monday morning he went down to the chambers in the Temple where
his name as a practising barrister was painted upon the lintel of
the door. This was a matter of formality. Numberless barristers do
it every day; numberless ones of them find the same as he did--nothing
to be done. He had long since overcome the depression which such an
announcement had used to bring with it. There should be no
disappointment in the expected which invariably happens. The
sanguine mind is a weak mind that suffers it. Traill turned away from
the Temple, whistling a hymn tune as if it were a popular favourite.

From there he made his way down into the hub of journalism. The
descent into hell is easy. He rode there with a free lance--known
by all the editors--capable in his way--a man to be relied upon for
anything but imagination. From one office to another, he trudged;
climbing numberless stairs, filling in numberless slips of paper
with his name, saying nothing about his business. They knew his
business--the ability to do anything that was going. He had written
leaders on the advance of Socialism--criticized a play, reviewed a
book. It says little beyond the fact that one is ready and willing
to do these things.

So, until the nearing hour of lunch time, he went about--a scavenger
of jobs--sweeping up the refuse of the paper's needs, as the boys
in Covent Garden search through the barrows of sawdust for the stray,
green grapes that have been thrown out with the brushings of the
stalls.

If one knew how half the men in London find the way to live, one would
stand amazed. Life is not the dreadful thing; it is the living of
it. Life in the abstract is a gay pageant, the passing of a show,
caparisoned in armour, in ermine, in motley, in what you will. But
see that man without his a