“Ever known him like it before?” Mr. Waddington inquired.

“Never, sir.  I thought he seemed chippier than ever this morning when he went out.  His last words were that he’d bet me a packet of Woodbines that he landed the old fool.”

“He’s gone dotty!” the auctioneer decided, as he turned back towards his sanctum.  “He’s either gone dotty or he’s been drinking.  The last chap in the world I should have thought it of!”

The mental attitude of Alfred Burton, as he emerged into the street, was in some respects curious.  He was not in the least sorry for what had happened.  On the contrary, he found himself wishing that the day’s respite had not been granted to him, and that his departure from the place of his employment was final.  He was very much in the position of a man who has been transferred without warning or notice from the streets of London to the streets of Pekin.  Every object which he saw he looked upon with different eyes.  Every face which he passed produced a different impression upon him.  He looked about him with all the avidity of one suddenly conscious of a great store of unused impressions.  It was like a second birth.  He neither understood the situation nor attempted to analyze it.  He was simply conscious of a most delightful and inexplicable light-heartedness, and of a host of sensations which seemed to produce at every moment some new pleasure.  His first and most pressing anxiety was a singular one.  He loathed himself from head to foot.  He shuddered as he passed the shop-windows for fear he should see his own reflection.  He made his way unfalteringly to an outfitter’s shop, and from there, with a bundle under his arm, to the baths.  It was a very different Alfred Burton indeed who, an hour or two later, issued forth into the streets.  Gone was the Cockney young man with the sandy moustache, the cheap silk hat worn at various angles to give himself a rakish air, the flashy clothes, cheap and pretentious, the assured, not to say bumptious air so sedulously copied from the deportment of his employer.  Enter a new and completely transformed Alfred Burton, an inoffensive-looking young man in a neat gray suit, a lilac-colored tie of delicate shade, a flannel shirt with no pretence at cuffs, but with a spotless turned down collar, a soft Homburg hat, a clean-shaven lip.  With a new sense of self-respect and an immense feeling of relief, Burton, after a few moments’ hesitation, directed his footsteps towards the National Gallery.  He had once been there years ago on a wet Bank Holiday, and some faint instinct of memory which somehow or other had survived the burden of his sordid days suddenly reasserted itself.  He climbed the steps and passed through the portals with the beating heart of the explorer who climbs his last hill.  It was his entrance, this, into the new world whose call was tearing at his heartstrings.  He bought no catalogue, he asked no questions.  From room to room he passed with untiring footsteps.  His whole being was filled