tomorrow night--just Carmen--I think I can persuade her--and
nobody else?"

"I'm sorry that I have an engagement," Jack answered.

"Well, some other time. Only soon."

This call did Jack temporarily a world of good. It helped his
self-esteem. But it was only temporary. The black fact stared him in the
face every morning that he was ruined. And it came over him gradually
that he was a useless member of society. He never had done anything; he
was not trained or fitted to do anything. And this was impressed upon
him in the occasional attempts he made to get employment. He avoided as
much as possible contact with those who knew him. Shame prevented him
from applying to them for occupation, and besides he very well knew
that to those who knew him his idle career was no recommendation. Yet
he formed a habit of going down-town every day and looking for work. His
appearance commanded civility, but everywhere he met with refusal, and
he began to feel like a well-bred tramp. There had been in his mind
before no excuse for tramps. He could see now how they were made.

It was not that he lacked capacity. He knew a great deal, in an
amateurish way, about pictures, books, bric-a-brac, and about society.
Why shouldn't he write? He visited the Loan Exhibition, and wrote a
careful criticism on the pictures and sent it to a well-known journal.
It was returned with thanks: the journal had its own art critic. He
prepared other articles about curious books, and one about porcelain and
pottery. They were all returned, except one which gave the history of a
rare bit of majolica, which had been picked up forty cents and then sold
for five hundred dollars, and was now owned by a collector who had
paid four thousand dollars for it. For that the newspaper sent him five
dollars. That was not encouraging, and his next effort for the same
journal was returned. Either he hadn't the newspaper knack, or the
competition was too great.

He had ceased going to his club. It was too painful to meet his
acquaintances in his altered circumstances, and it was too expensive. It
even annoyed him to meet Major Fairfax. That philosopher had not changed
towards him any more than Miss Tavish had, but it was a melancholy
business to talk of his affairs, and to listen to the repeated advice
to go down to the country to Edith, and wait for some good opening. That
was just what he could not do. His whole frivolous life he began now to
see as she must have seen it.