“We must have a game—­several games,” he said.  He struck me as the sort of man to find a difficulty in getting anyone to play with him.

After that he went away.  As I had said, I did not dislike him—­he was pathetic; but his tone of mind, his sudden change of front, unnerved me.  It proved so absolutely that I was “going to go,” and I did not want to go—­in that sense.  The thing is a little difficult to explain, I wanted to take the job because I wanted to have money—­for a little time, for a year or so, but if I once began to go, the temptation would be strong to keep on going, and I was by no means sure that I should be able to resist the temptation.  So many others had failed.  What if I wrote to Fox, and resigned?...  Lea was deep in a manuscript once more.

“Shall I throw it up?” I asked suddenly.  I wanted the thing settled.

“Oh, go on with it, by all means go on with it,” Lea answered.

“And ...?” I postulated.

“Take your chance of the rest,” he supplied; “you’ve had a pretty bad time.”

“I suppose,” I reflected, “if I haven’t got the strength of mind to get out of it in time, I’m not up to much.”

“There’s that, too,” he commented, “the game may not be worth the candle.”  I was silent.  “You must take your chance when you get it,” he added.

He had resumed his reading, but he looked up again when I gave way, as I did after a moment’s thought.

“Of course,” he said, “it will probably be all right.  You do your best.  It’s a good thing ... might even do you good.”

In that way the thing went through.  As I was leaving the room, the idea occurred to me, “By the way, you don’t know anything of a clique:  the Dimensionists—­Fourth Dimensionists?”

“Never heard of them,” he negatived.  “What’s their specialty?”

“They’re going to inherit the earth,” I answered.

“Oh, I wish them joy,” he closed.

“You don’t happen to be one yourself?  I believe it’s a sort of secret society.”  He wasn’t listening.  I went out quietly.

The night effects of that particular neighbourhood have always affected me dismally.  That night they upset me, upset me in much the same way, acting on much the same nerves as the valley in which I had walked with that puzzling girl.  I remembered that she had said she stood for the future, that she was a symbol of my own decay—­the whole silly farrago, in fact.  I reasoned with myself—­that I was tired, out of trim, and so on, that I was in a fit state to be at the mercy of any nightmare.  I plunged into Southampton Row.  There was safety in the contact with the crowd, in jostling, in being jostled.

CHAPTER SIX