Piers had undertaken a task and would not shirk it; but in spite of all reasonings and idealisms he found life a hard thing during those weeks of August.  He lost his sleep, turned from food, and for a moment feared collapse such as he had suffered soon after his first going to Odessa.

By the good offices of John Jacks he had already been elected to a convenient club, and occasionally he passed an evening there; but his habit was to go home to Guildford Street, and sit hour after hour in languid brooding.  He feared the streets at night-time; in his loneliness and misery, a gleam upon some wanton face would perchance have lured him, as had happened ere now.  Not so much at the bidding of his youthful blood, as out of mere longing for companionship, the common cause of disorder in men condemned to solitude in great cities.  A woman’s voice, the touch of a soft hand —­this is what men so often hunger for, when they are censured for lawless appetite.  But Piers Otway knew himself, and chose to sit alone in the dreary lodging-house.  Then he thought of Irene, trying to forget what had happened.  Now and then successfully; in a waking dream he saw and heard her, and knew again the exalting passion that had been the best of his life, and was saved from ignoble impulse.

When he was at the lowest, there came a letter from Olga Hannaford, the first he had ever received in her writing.  Olga had joined her mother at Malvern, and Mrs. Hannaford was so unwell that it seemed likely they would remain there for a few weeks.  “When we can move, the best thing will be to take a house in or near London.  Mother has decided not to return to Bryanston Square, and I, for my part, shall give up the life you made fun of.  You were quite right; of course it was foolish to go on in that way.”  She asked him to write to her mother, whom a line from him would cheer.  Piers did so; also replying to his correspondent, and trying to make a humorous picture of the life he led between the City and Guilford Street.  It was a sorry jest, but it helped him against his troubles.  When, in a week’s time, Olga again wrote, he was glad.  The letter seemed to him interesting; it revived their common memories of life at Geneva, whither Olga said she would like to return.  “What to do—­how to pass the years before me—­is the question with me now, as I suppose it is with so many girls of my age.  I must find a mission.  Can you suggest one?  Only don’t let it have anything humanitarian about it.  That would make me a humbug, which I have never been yet.  It must be something entirely for my own pleasure and profit.  Do think about it in an idle moment.”