his
veins, on the weaker men who had gone under that he might prosper. Now
that it was his, he wanted the best possible value for it; it was the
natural desire of the man to be uppermost in the bargain. The delights
of the world behind, it seemed to him that he had already drained. The
crushing of his rivals, the homage of his less successful competitors,
the grosser pleasures of wine, the music-halls, and the unlimited
spending of money amongst people whom he despised had long since palled
upon him. He had a keen, strong desire to escape once and for ever from
his surroundings. He lounged along, smoking a large cigar, keen-eyed and
observant, laying up for himself a store of impressions, unconsciously
irritated at every step by a sense of ostracism, of being in some
indefinable manner without kinship and wholly apart from this world, in
which it seemed natural now that he should find some place. He gazed
at the great houses without respect or envy, at the men with a fierce
contempt, at the women with a sore feeling that if by chance he should
be brought into contact with any of them they would regard him as a
sort of wild animal, to be humoured or avoided purely as a matter of
self-interest. The very brightness and brilliancy of their toilettes,
the rustling of their dresses, the trim elegance and daintiness which he
was able to appreciate without being able to understand, only served
to deepen his consciousness of the gulf which lay between him and them.
They were of a world to which, even if he were permitted to enter it,
he could not possibly belong. He returned such glances as fell upon him
with fierce insolence; he was indeed somewhat of a strange figure in
his ill-fitting and inappropriate clothes amongst a gathering of smart
people. A lady looking at him through raised lorgnettes turned and
whispered something with a smile to her companion--once before he had
heard an audible titter from a little group of loiterers. He returned
the glance with a lightning-like look of diabolical fierceness, and,
turning round, stood upon the curbstone and called a hansom.

A sense of depression swept over him as he was driven through the
crowded streets towards Waterloo. The half-scornful, half-earnest
prophecy, to which he had listened years ago in a squalid African
hut, flashed into his mind. For the first time he began to have dim
apprehensions as to his future. All his life he had been a toiler, and
joy had been with him in