honest man, was another question, which for several years scarcely troubled his conscience.  Before long a use was found for his slender medical attainments; it became one of his functions to answer persons who visited the office for information as to the climatic features of this or that new country, and their physical fitness for going out as colonists.  Of course, there was demanded of him a radical unscrupulousness, and often enough he proved equal to the occasion; but as time went on, bringing slow development of brain and character, he found these personal interviews anything but agreeable.  He had constantly before him the spectacle of human misery and defeat, now and then in such dread forms that his heart sank and his tongue refused to lie.  When disgust made him contemplate the possibility of finding more honourable employment, the manifest difficulties deterred him.

He held the place for nearly ten years, living in the end so soberly and frugally that his two hundred pounds seemed a considerable income; it enabled him to spend his annual month of holiday in continental travel, which now had a significance very different from that of his truancies in France or Belgium before he began to earn a livelihood.  Two deaths, a year’s interval between them, released him from his office.  Upon these events and their issue he had not counted; independence came to him as a great surprise, and on the path of self-knowledge he had far to travel before the significance of that and many another turning-point grew clear to his backward gaze.

Seeking for a comfortable abode, he discovered these rooms in Bayswater.  They were to let furnished, the house being occupied by a widow not quite of the ordinary type of landlady, who entertained only bachelors, and was fairly conscientious in the discharge of her obligations.  Six months later, during Harvey’s absence abroad, this woman died, and on his return the house had already been stripped of furniture.  For a moment he inclined to take a house of his own, but from this perilous experiment he was saved by an intimation that, if he were willing to supply himself with furniture and service, an incoming tenant would let him occupy his old quarters.  Harvey grasped at the offer.  His landlord was a man named Buncombe, a truss manufacturer, who had two children, and seemingly no wife.  The topmost storey Buncombe assigned to relatives of his own —­ a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Handover, with a sickly grownup son, who took some part in the truss business.  For a few weeks Rolfe was waited upon by a charwoman, whom he paid extravagantly for a maximum of dirt and discomfort; then the unsatisfactory person fell ill, and, whilst cursing his difficulties, Harvey was surprised by a visit from Mrs. Handover, who made an unexpected suggestion —­ would Mr. Rolfe accept her services in lieu of the charwoman’s, paying her whatever he had been accustomed to give?  The proposal startled him.  Mrs. Handover seemed to belong