her?
An epic can be written round a devil as greatly as round a hero. Milton
showed us that. What is wanted in a poet's theme is grandeur, either
fine or terrible. Ascher's grip upon the world has surely that.

CHAPTER III.

We landed in New York and to my satisfaction I secured the rooms I
usually occupy. They are in a small hotel off Fifth Avenue, half way
between the streets which boast of numbers higher than fifty, and those
others which follow the effete European customs of having names. It
is one of the paradoxes of New York that the parts of the city where
fashionable people live and spend their money are severely business-like
in the treatment of streets, laying them out so as to form correct
parallelograms and distinguishing them by numbers instead of names, as
if terrified of letting imagination loose for a moment. Down town where
the money is made and the offices of the money makers are piled one
on top of another, the streets are as irregular as those of London or
Paris, and have all sorts of fascinatingly suggestive names. My hotel
stands in the debatable land between the two districts. Fashionable life
is ebbing away from its neighbourhood. Business is, as yet, a little shy
of invading it. The situation makes an appeal to me. I may be, as Gorman
says, a man of no country, but I am a man of two worlds. I cling to the
skirts of society, something of an outsider, yet one who has the right
of entry, if I choose to take the trouble, the large amount of trouble
necessary to exercise the right. I am one who is trying to make money,
scarcely more than an amateur among business men, but deeply interested
in their pursuits. This particular hotel seems to me therefore a
convenient, that is to say a suitable place of residence for me. It is
not luxurious, nor is it cheap, but it is comfortable, which is perhaps
the real reason why I go to it.

I gave Gorman my address before I left the ship, but I did not expect
him to make any use of it. I thought that I had seen the last of him
when I crossed the gangway and got caught in the whirlpool of fuss which
eddied round the custom house shed. I was very much surprised when
he walked in on me at breakfast time on the second morning after our
arrival. I was eating an omelette at the time. I offered him a share of
it and a cup of coffee. Gorman refused both; but he helped himself to
a glass of iced water. This shows how adaptable Gorman is. Hardly any
European can dri