o do those idiotic trifles! After holding
out so long, to capitulate absolutely for want of bread! No, he would
not dine with Mr. Robinson--he would starve rather!

"Better to starve than stoop to inferiors!" he exclaimed, as he set down
the lamp again. How little, indeed, he had eaten all that day! And with
the thought a distressing weakness came over him. There was a humming at
his temples: the studio disappeared in a mist, then reappeared
oscillating. He was constrained to steady himself by clutching at the
table.

In a minute or two the vertigo passed off, leaving him with a dull
craving for food and drink. He might make some sort of a meal from such
poor provender as his larder afforded--a portion of a loaf, the
remainder of a tin of sardines, a hunk of cheese; but somehow the
prospect was singularly uninviting. He might, indeed, add variety to the
store by laying out his last shilling in the streets adjoining, but the
shilling was too precious, and anyway he had not the energy to go
shopping. There swam up before him the picture of a well-lighted,
comfortable dining-room with a heavily laden table, and of a middle of
salmon, piping hot, that was being served with a dainty white sauce. And
then there were hosts of bottles on a mahogany sideboard: fat,
gold-tipped bottles; tall, long-necked bottles; fantastic twisted
bottles. Good well-cooked food was nourishing him, a delicate wine was
moistening his feverish palate, touching his whole dull self to a
lighter mood.

He had accepted the invitation. The Robinsons were expecting him, would
be troubled and put out if he did not arrive. He carried the lamp up to
the gallery, and began his preparations. And then the whim took him to
change his clothes again. Not that he supposed the Robinsons affected to
be fashionable of an evening, but the pride of the half-starved man rose
in irrational self-assertion.

So he dressed carefully, tying his bow to perfection, and arranging the
set of his waistcoat fastidiously. It was so long since he had put on
evening clothes, and as he saw himself in the glass, well set up, and
bearing himself exquisitely, the fact of his poverty seemed absurd and
incredible. His face, too, seemed to have recovered some of its olden
confidence as he scanned it critically. True the cheeks were a trifle
thin and shrunken, but the lines of dejection and sadness had lightened
at the new stirring within him.

Then for the first time in all these years