capitals in search of her or of Mrs. Welstoke, to no
purpose. My resources dwindled. The wheel and the cards mocked my
attempts to repair my state. Fortune had dangled salvation in front of
me, had snatched it away, and now laughed at my attempts to put myself
in funds. I was shut off from a search for my happiness. When I had
played to gain money for my damnation, as if with the assistance of the
Evil One, I had won; now that I sought regeneration, a malicious fiend
conducted the game and ruined me.

I remember of thinking how I had begun life with full assurance of my
power over all the world and, above all, over myself. I was sitting on a
chair on the pavement in front of a miserable little cafe at Brest,
looking down at my worn-out shoes.

"Well," said I, aloud, "some absinthe--a day of forgetfulness--and
then--I will begin life anew."

It was the same old tricky promise--the present lying to the future and
making everything seem right.

I clapped my hands. A slovenly girl served me, standing with her fat red
hands pressed on her hips as I gazed down into the glass.

"Drink," said she. She was a cockney, after all.

"Must I?" I asked.

She nodded solemnly. And so I drank.

CHAPTER II

MARY VANCE

Eight days later I was taken on board a sailing-vessel, and when we were
out at sea and my nerves had steadied, I was forced by a villainous
captain to the work of a common sailor. From that experience as a
laborer I never recovered. My mind learned the comfort of association
with other minds which conceived only the most elementary thoughts. The
savage vulgarity of stevedores, strike-breakers, ships' waiters, circus
crews, and soldiers had a charm to me of which I had never before
dreamed. I entered the brotherhood of those at life's bottom and found
that again I was looked upon as a man superior to my associates and
perhaps more fortunate. Even though I exhibited a brutality equal to
any, I was regarded as a person of undoubted cleverness. If the great or
showy classes of mankind would no longer flatter my vanity, the vicious
and uncivilized classes would still perform that office. Fate threw me
among them, so that nothing should be left undone to cajole me toward
the last point of degradation.

I kept no track of those years, nor understood why Mary Vance ever
married me, nor why she was willing to be so patient, so loyal, so
tender, and