imes when her acceptance of gifts or compliments from
another man made me believe myself really in love with Beatrice. Then
some peculiarly distasteful aspect of my journalistic work would be
forced upon me; I would receive some striking illustration of the
hopelessly sordid character of Blaine and his circle, of the policy of
_The Mass_, of the general trend of my life; and, seeing Beatrice's
indifferent acceptance of all this venality, I would turn from her with
a certain sense of revulsion--for three days. After that, I would return
to handsome Beatrice, with her feline graces and her warm colouring, as
a chilly, tired man turns from his work to his fireside.

In short, as time went on, I became as indifferent to ends and aims as
the most callous among those at whose indifference to matters of real
moment I had once girded so vehemently. And I lacked their excuse. I cut
no figure at all in the race for money and pleasure; unless my clinging
to Beatrice be accounted pursuit of pleasure. Certainly it lacked the
rapt absorption which characterized the multitude really in the race. I
fear I was rapidly degenerating into a common type of Fleet Street hack;
into nothing more than Clement Blaine's assistant. And then a quite new
influence came into my life.

XI

MORNING CALLERS

A woman mixed of such fine elements
That were all virtue and religion dead
She'd make them newly, being what she was.

GEORGE ELIOT.

A sandy-haired youth-of-all-work, named Rivers, spent his days in the
box we called the front office; a kind of lobby really, by which one
entered the tolerably large and desperately untidy room in which Blaine
and myself compiled each issue of _The Mass_. Blaine spent a good slice
of all his days in keeping appointments, usually in Fleet Street bars.

My days were spent in the main office of the paper, among the files, the
scissors and paste, the books of reference, and the three Gargantuan
waste-paper baskets. Here at different times I interviewed men of every
European nationality and every known calling, besides innumerable
followers of no recognized trade or profession. Among them all I cannot
call to mind more than two or three who, by the most charitable stretch
of imagination, could have been called gentlemen.

Most of them were obviously, and in all ways seedy, shady
characters--furtive, wordy creatures, full of vague, involved
grievan