Haunted by the five of clubs, which on one occasion he should have played and did not, he walked till he came to the Haymarket.  Then he stopped.  What could he do?  All the life of idleness and luxury which he had so long enjoyed faded like a dream, and the spectre of cheap lodgings and daily journalism rose painfully distinct.  He pitied the street-sweepers, and wondered if it were possible for him to slip down into the gutter.  “When I have paid my hotel bill, I shan’t have a tenner.”  He thought of Mrs. Byril, but the idea did not please him, and he remembered Frank had told him he had a cottage on the river.  He would go there.  He might put up for a night or two at Hall’s.

“I will start a series of articles to-morrow.  What shall it be?” An unfortunate still stood at the corner of the street. “’Letters to a Light o’ Love!’ Frank must advance me something upon them....  Those stupid women! if they were not so witless they could rise to any height.  If I had only been a woman! ...  If I had been a woman I should have liked to have been Ninon de Lanclos.”

CHAPTER VIII

When Mike had paid his hotel bill, very few pounds were left for the card-room, and judging it was not an hour in which he might tempt fortune, he “rooked” a young man remorselessly.  Having thus replenished his pockets he turned to the whist-table for amusement.  Luck was against him; he played, defying luck, and left the club owing eighty pounds, five of which he had borrowed from Longley.

Next morning as he dozed, he wondered if, had he played the ten of diamonds instead of the seven of clubs, it would have materially altered his fortune; and from cards his thoughts wandered, till they took root in the articles he was to write for the Pilgrim.  He was in Hall’s spare bed-room—­a large, square room, empty of all furniture except a camp bedstead.  His portmanteau lay wide open in the middle of the floor, and a gaunt fireplace yawned amid some yellow marbles.

“’Darling, like a rose you hold the whole world between your lips, and you shed its leaves in little kisses.’  That will do for the opening sentences.”  Then as words slipped from him he considered the component parts of his subject.

“The first letter is of course introductory, and I must establish certain facts, truths which have become distorted and falsified, or lost sight of.  Addressing an ideal courtesan, I shall say, ’You must understand that the opening sentence of this letter does not include any part of the old reproach which has been levelled against you since man began to love you, and that was when he ceased to be an ape and became man.