Frank was in shoaling water, and could not pay his contributors; but Mike could get blood out of a turnip, and Frank advanced him ten pounds on the proposed articles.  Frank counted on these articles to whip up the circulation, and Mike promised to let him have four within the week, and left the cottage at Henley, where Frank was living, full of dreams of work.  And every morning before he got out of bed he considered and reconsidered his subject, finding always more than one idea, and many a witty fancy; and every day after breakfast the work undone hung like a sword between Hall and him as they sat talking of their friends, of art, of women, of things that did not interest them.  They hung around each other, loth yet desirous to part; they followed each other through the three rooms, buttoning their braces and shirt-collars.  And when conversation had worn itself out, Mike accepted any pretext to postpone the day’s work.  He had to fetch ink or cigarettes.

But he was always detained, if not by friends, by the beauty of the gardens or the river.  Never did the old dining-hall and the staircases, balustraded—­on whose gray stone a leaf, the first of many, rustles—­seem more intense and pregnant with that mystic mournfulness which is the Thames, and which is London.  The dull sphinx-like water rolling through multitude of bricks, seemed to mark on this wistful autumn day a more melancholy enchantment, and looking out on the great waste of brick delicately blended with smoke and mist, and seeing the hay-boats sailing picturesquely, and the tugs making for Blackfriars, long lines of coal-barges in their wake, laden so deep that the water slopped over the gunwales, he thought of the spring morning when he had waited there for Lily.  How she persisted in his mind!  Why had he not asked her to marry him instead of striving to make her his mistress?  She was too sweet to be cast off like the others; she would have accepted him if he had asked her.  He had sacrificed marriage for self, and what had self given him?

Mike was surprised at these thoughts, and pleased, for they proved a certain residue of goodness in him; at all events, called into his consideration a side of his nature which he was not wearisomely familiar with.  Then he dismissed these thoughts as he might have the letter of a determined creditor.  He could still bid them go.  And having easily rid himself of them, he noticed the porters in their white aprons, and the flight of pigeons, the sacred birds of the Temple, coming down from the roofs.  And he loved now more than ever Fleet Street, and the various offices where he might idle, and the various luncheon-bars to which he might adjourn with one of the staff, perhaps with the editor of one of the newspapers.  The October sunlight was warm and soft, greeted his face agreeably as he lounged, stopping before every shop in which there were books or prints.  Ludgate Circus was always a favourite with him, partly because he loved St. Paul’s, partly because women assembled there; and now in the mist, delicate and pure, rose above the town the lovely dome.