They nodded civilly to one another.  Quest swallowed his peppered vichy, pulled a long face and said: 

“We’re a pair of ’em, all right.”

“Pair of what?” inquired the thick-lipped young man, face becoming rosier and looking more than ever like somebody’s groom.

“Pair of bum whips.  We’ve laid on the lash too hard.  I’m going to stable my five nags—­my five wits!”—­he explained with a sneer as the other regarded him with all the bovine intelligence of one of his own stable-boys—­“because they’re foundered; and that’s the why, young four-in-hand!”

He left the bar, adding as he passed: 

“I’m a rotting citizen, but you”—­he laughed insolently—­“you have become phosphorescent!”

The street outside was all fog and melting snow; the cold vichy he had gulped made him internally uncomfortable.

“A gay day to go to Mulqueen’s,” he muttered sourly, gazing about for a taxicab.

There was none for hire at that moment; he walked on for a while, feeling the freezing slush penetrate his boot-soles; and by degrees a sullen temper rose within him, revolting—­not at what he had done to himself—­but at the consequences which were becoming more unpleasant every moment.

As he trudged along, slipping, sliding, his overcoat turned up around his pasty face, his cheeks wet with the icy fog, he continued swearing to himself, at himself, at the slush, the cold vichy in his belly, the appetite already awakened which must be denied.

Denied?...  Was he never to have one more decent drink?  Was this to be the absolute and final end?  Certainly.  Yet his imagination could not really comprehend, compass, picture to himself life made a nuisance by self-denial—­life in any other guise except as a background for inertia and indulgence.

He swore again, profanely asking something occult why he should be singled out to be made miserable on a day like this?  Why, among all the men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water and cocking one ear to the sounds of human revelry within the Tavern.

As for his work—­yes, he ought to do it....  Interest in it was already colder; the flare-up was dying down; habitual apathy chilled it to its embers.  Indifference, ill-temper, self-pity, resentment, these were the steps he was slowly taking backward.  He took them, in their natural sequence, one by one.

Old Squills meant well, no doubt, but he had been damned impertinent....  And why had Old Squills dragged in his sister, Sylvia?...  He had paid as much attention to her as any brother does to any sister....  And how had she repaid him?

Head lowered doggedly against the sleet which was now falling thickly, he shouldered his way forward, brooding on his “honour,” on his sister, on Dysart.

He had not been home in weeks; he did not know of his sister’s departure with Bunny Gray.  She had left a letter at home for him, because she knew no other addresses except his clubs; and inquiry over the telephone elicited the information that he had not been to any of them.