journalism rose painfully distinct. He pitied the
street-sweepers, and wondered if it were possible for him to slip
down into the gutter. "When I have paid my hotel bill, I shan't have
a tenner." He thought of Mrs. Byril, but the idea did not please him,
and he remembered Frank had told him he had a cottage on the river.
He would go there. He might put up for a night or two at Hall's.

"I will start a series of articles to-morrow. What shall it be?" An
unfortunate still stood at the corner of the street. "'Letters to a
Light o' Love!' Frank must advance me something upon them.... Those
stupid women! if they were not so witless they could rise to any
height. If I had only been a woman! ... If I had been a woman I should
have liked to have been Ninon de Lanclos."

CHAPTER VIII

When Mike had paid his hotel bill, very few pounds were left for the
card-room, and judging it was not an hour in which he might tempt
fortune, he "rooked" a young man remorselessly. Having thus
replenished his pockets he turned to the whist-table for amusement.
Luck was against him; he played, defying luck, and left the club
owing eighty pounds, five of which he had borrowed from Longley.

Next morning as he dozed, he wondered if, had he played the ten of
diamonds instead of the seven of clubs, it would have materially
altered his fortune; and from cards his thoughts wandered, till they
took root in the articles he was to write for the _Pilgrim_. He was
in Hall's spare bed-room--a large, square room, empty of all
furniture except a camp bedstead. His portmanteau lay wide open in
the middle of the floor, and a gaunt fireplace yawned amid some
yellow marbles.

"'Darling, like a rose you hold the whole world between your lips,
and you shed its leaves in little kisses.' That will do for the
opening sentences." Then as words slipped from him he considered the
component parts of his subject.

"The first letter is of course introductory, and I must establish
certain facts, truths which have become distorted and falsified, or
lost sight of. Addressing an ideal courtesan, I shall say, 'You must
understand that the opening sentence of this letter does not include
any part of the old reproach which has been levelled against you
since man began to love you, and that was when he ceased to be an ape
and became man.

"'If you were ever sphinx-like and bloodthirsty, which I very much
doubt, you have changed flesh and skin, even the marrow of your