‘Robert Holt.’

‘What are you?’

‘A clerk.’

‘You look as if you were a clerk.’  There was a flame of scorn in his voice which scorched me even then.  ’What sort of a clerk are you?’

‘I am out of a situation.’

‘You look as if you were out of a situation.’  Again the scorn.  ’Are you the sort of clerk who is always out of a situation?  You are a thief.’

‘I am not a thief.’

‘Do clerks come through the window?’ I was still,—­he putting no constraint on me to speak.  ‘Why did you come through the window?’

‘Because it was open.’

‘So!—­Do you always come through a window which is open?’

‘No.’

‘Then why through this?’

‘Because I was wet—­and cold—­and hungry—­and tired.’

The words came from me as if he had dragged them one by one,—­ which, in fact, he did.

‘Have you no home?’

‘No.’

‘Money?’

‘No.’

‘Friends?’

‘No.’

‘Then what sort of a clerk are you?’

I did not answer him,—­I did not know what it was he wished me to say.  I was the victim of bad luck, nothing else,—­I swear it.  Misfortune had followed hard upon misfortune.  The firm by whom I had been employed for years suspended payment.  I obtained a situation with one of their creditors, at a lower salary.  They reduced their staff, which entailed my going.  After an interval I obtained a temporary engagement; the occasion which required my services passed, and I with it.  After another, and a longer interval, I again found temporary employment, the pay for which was but a pittance.  When that was over I could find nothing.  That was nine months ago, and since then I had not earned a penny.  It is so easy to grow shabby, when you are on the everlasting tramp, and are living on your stock of clothes.  I had trudged all over London in search of work,—­work of any kind would have been welcome, so long as it would have enabled me to keep body and soul together.  And I had trudged in vain.  Now I had been refused admittance as a casual,—­how easy is the descent!  But I did not tell the man lying on the bed all this.  He did not wish to hear,—­ had he wished he would have made me tell him.

It may be that he read my story, unspoken though it was,—­it is conceivable.  His eyes had powers of penetration which were peculiarly their own,—­that I know.

‘Undress!’

When he spoke again that was what he said, in those guttural tones of his in which there was a reminiscence of some foreign land.  I obeyed, letting my sodden, shabby clothes fall anyhow upon the floor.  A look came on his face, as I stood naked in front of him, which, if it was meant for a smile, was a satyr’s smile, and which filled me with a sensation of shuddering repulsion.

’What a white skin you have,—­how white!  What would I not give for a skin as white as that,—­ah yes!’ He paused, devouring me with his glances; then continued.  ’Go to the cupboard; you will find a cloak; put it on.’