’"Come—­I carried it off pretty well,” he said, wheeling suddenly.  “Something’s paid off—­not much.  I wonder what’s to come.”  His face did not show any emotion, only it appeared a little darkened and swollen, as though he had been holding his breath.  He smiled reluctantly as it were, and went on while I gazed up at him mutely. . . .  “Thank you, though—­your room—­jolly convenient—­for a chap—­badly hipped.” . . .  The rain pattered and swished in the garden; a water-pipe (it must have had a hole in it) performed just outside the window a parody of blubbering woe with funny sobs and gurgling lamentations, interrupted by jerky spasms of silence. . . .  “A bit of shelter,” he mumbled and ceased.

’A flash of faded lightning darted in through the black framework of the windows and ebbed out without any noise.  I was thinking how I had best approach him (I did not want to be flung off again) when he gave a little laugh.  “No better than a vagabond now” . . . the end of the cigarette smouldered between his fingers . . . “without a single—­single,” he pronounced slowly; “and yet . . .”  He paused; the rain fell with redoubled violence.  “Some day one’s bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again.  Must!” he whispered distinctly, glaring at my boots.

’I did not even know what it was he wished so much to regain, what it was he had so terribly missed.  It might have been so much that it was impossible to say.  A piece of ass’s skin, according to Chester. . . .  He looked up at me inquisitively.  “Perhaps.  If life’s long enough,” I muttered through my teeth with unreasonable animosity.  “Don’t reckon too much on it.”

’"Jove!  I feel as if nothing could ever touch me,” he said in a tone of sombre conviction.  “If this business couldn’t knock me over, then there’s no fear of there being not enough time to—­climb out, and . . .”  He looked upwards.

’It struck me that it is from such as he that the great army of waifs and strays is recruited, the army that marches down, down into all the gutters of the earth.  As soon as he left my room, that “bit of shelter,” he would take his place in the ranks, and begin the journey towards the bottomless pit.  I at least had no illusions; but it was I, too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak, in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold.  It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.  It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.  It was the fear of losing him that kept me silent, for it was borne upon me suddenly and with unaccountable force that should I let him slip away into the darkness I would never forgive myself.