“Age?  Experience?  Why did you leave your job?”

He listened to the replies without expression.  When it came to Philip’s turn he fancied that Mr. Gibbons stared at him curiously.  Philip’s clothes were neat and tolerably cut.  He looked a little different from the others.

“Experience?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t any,” said Philip.

“No good.”

Philip walked out of the office.  The ordeal had been so much less painful than he expected that he felt no particular disappointment.  He could hardly hope to succeed in getting a place the first time he tried.  He had kept the newspaper and now looked at the advertisements again:  a shop in Holborn needed a salesman too, and he went there; but when he arrived he found that someone had already been engaged.  If he wanted to get anything to eat that day he must go to Lawson’s studio before he went out to luncheon, so he made his way along the Brompton Road to Yeoman’s Row.

“I say, I’m rather broke till the end of the month,” he said as soon as he found an opportunity.  “I wish you’d lend me half a sovereign, will you?”

It was incredible the difficulty he found in asking for money; and he remembered the casual way, as though almost they were conferring a favour, men at the hospital had extracted small sums out of him which they had no intention of repaying.

“Like a shot,” said Lawson.

But when he put his hand in his pocket he found that he had only eight shillings.  Philip’s heart sank.

“Oh well, lend me five bob, will you?” he said lightly.

“Here you are.”

Philip went to the public baths in Westminster and spent sixpence on a bath.  Then he got himself something to eat.  He did not know what to do with himself in the afternoon.  He would not go back to the hospital in case anyone should ask him questions, and besides, he had nothing to do there now; they would wonder in the two or three departments he had worked in why he did not come, but they must think what they chose, it did not matter:  he would not be the first student who had dropped out without warning.  He went to the free library, and looked at the papers till they wearied him, then he took out Stevenson’s New Arabian Nights; but he found he could not read:  the words meant nothing to him, and he continued to brood over his helplessness.  He kept on thinking the same things all the time, and the fixity of his thoughts made his head ache.  At last, craving for fresh air, he went into the Green Park and lay down on the grass.  He thought miserably of his deformity, which made it impossible for him to go to the war.  He went to sleep and dreamt that he was suddenly sound of foot and out at the Cape in a regiment of Yeomanry; the pictures he had looked at in the illustrated papers gave materials for his fancy; and he saw himself on the Veldt, in khaki, sitting with other men round a fire at night.  When he awoke he found that it was still quite light,