On the contrary he would have to pay heavily for the spiritual luxury of that break with the editor of Metropolis.  When he reached his comfortable room on the third floor in Torrington Square, he sat down by his writing-table, not to write but to think.  It was war-time, fatal to letters.  Such terrors arose before him as must arise before a young man severed by his own rash act from the sources of his income.  What a moment he had chosen for the deed, too!  When money was of all things the thing he most passionately desired; when to his fancy the sum of a hundred and seventy-five pounds was the form that most nearly, most divinely presented the adored perfection; when, too, that enchanting figure was almost in his grasp.  A few brief spasms of economy, and ten months of Metropolis would have seen him through.

And yet there was no bitterness in the dismay with which he contemplated his present forlorn and impecunious state.  It was inevitable that he should sever himself from the sources of his income when they were found to be impure.  Much more inevitable than that he should have cut off that untainted supply which six months ago would have flowed to him through Maddox.  Common prudence had not restrained him from quarrelling with Maddox over a point of honour that was shadowy compared with this.  It was hardly likely that it should have restrained him now.  There were few things that he would not do for Lucia Harden, but not even for her sake could he have done otherwise than he had done.  It was the least that honour could require of him, the very least.

His attitude to honour had in a manner changed.  Eight years ago it had seemed to him the fantastic child of a preference for common honesty, coupled with a preposterous passion for Lucia Harden.  He had indulged it as a man indulges the creature of fantasy and caprice, and had felt that he was thrusting a personal infatuation into a moral region where such extravagances are unknown.  It belonged rather to the realm of imagination, being essentially a poet’s honour, a winged and lyric creature, a creature altogether too radiant and delicate to do battle with the gross material world, a thing as mysterious and indomitable as his genius; a very embarrassing companion for a young journalist in his first start in life.  And now he had grown so used to it that it seemed to him no longer mysterious and fantastic; obedience to it was as simple as the following of a natural impulse, a thing in no way conspicuous and superb.  It was the men who knew nothing of such leadership who seemed to him separated from the order of the world.  But to the friends who watched him Rickman’s honour had been always an amazing spectacle.  Like another genius it had taken possession of him and led him through what Jewdwine had called the slough of journalism, so that he went with fine fastidious feet, choosing the clean places in that difficult way.  Like another genius it had lured him, laughing and reckless, along paths perilous and impossible to other men.  How glad he had been to follow that bright-eyed impetuous leader.