‘The old Adam is stronger than ever in me,’ he pursued.  ’If I were condemned for life to the United States, I should go mad, and perish in an attempt to swim the Atlantic.’

‘Then why did you stay so long?’

’I could have stayed with advantage even longer.  It’s something to have studied with tolerable thoroughness the most hateful form of society yet developed.  I saw it at first as a man does who is living at his ease; at last, as a poor devil who is thankful for the institution of free lunches.  I went first-class, and I came back as a steerage passenger.  It has been a year well spent.’

It had made him, in aspect, more than a twelve-month older.  His lounging attitude, the spirit of his talk, showed that he was unchanged in bodily and mental habits; but certain lines new-graven upon his visage, and an austerity that had taken the place of youthful self-consciousness, signified a more than normal progress in experience.

‘Do you know,’ said Munden slyly, ’that you have brought back a trans-Atlantic accent?’

‘Accent?  The devil!  I don’t believe it.’

‘Intonation, at all events.’

Tarrant professed a serious annoyance.

‘If that’s true, I’ll go and live for a month in Limerick.’

’It would be cheaper to join a Socialist club in the East End.  But just tell me how you stand.  How long can you hold out in these aristocratic lodgings?’

’Till Christmas.  I’m ashamed to say how I’ve got the money, so don’t ask.  I reached London with empty pockets.  And I’ll tell you one thing I have learnt, Munden.  There’s no villainy, no scoundrelism, no baseness conceivable, that isn’t excused by want of money.  I understand the whole “social question.”  The man who has never felt the perspiration come out on his forehead in asking himself how he is going to keep body and soul together, has no right to an opinion on the greatest question of the day.’

‘What particular scoundrelism or baseness have you committed?’ asked the other.

Tarrant averted his eyes.

‘I said I could understand such things.’

‘One sees that you have been breathed upon by democracy.’

’I loathe the word and the thing even more than I did, which is saying a good deal.’

‘Be it so.  You say you are going to work?’

’Yes, I have come back to work.  Even now, it’s difficult to realise that I must work or starve.  I understand how fellows who have unexpectedly lost their income go through life sponging on relatives and friends.  I understand how an educated man goes sinking through all the social grades, down to the common lodging-house and the infirmary.  And I honestly believe there’s only one thing that saves me from doing likewise.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘I can’t tell you—­not yet, at all events.’

’I always thought you a very fine specimen of the man born to do nothing,’ said Munden, with that smile which permitted him a surprising candour in conversation.