done or won?
Nothing, nothing. It had brought him nothing but old age, solitude,
disappointment, and, to-night especially, a sense of fatigue and
apathy that weighed upon him like a suffocating blanket. On a table, a
yard or two away, stood a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water
bottles and tumblers; he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew
that there was what he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him,
revive him, and make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress
and go to bed. But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the
whisky out, he shrank from that effort as from an Herculean labour;
no--he was too tired. Then his mind went back to the friends he had
left in Chelsea half an hour ago; it seemed an indefinably long time
ago, years and years ago; they were like blurred phantoms, dimly
remembered from a remote past.

Yes, his life had been a failure; total, miserable, abject. It had
come to nothing; its harvest was a harvest of ashes. If it had been a
useful life, he could have accepted its unhappiness; if it had been a
happy life, he could have forgiven its uselessness; but it had been
both useless and unhappy. He had done nothing for others, he had won
nothing for himself. Oh, but he had tried, he had tried. When he had
left Oxford people expected great things of him; he had expected great
things of himself. He was admitted to be clever, to be gifted; he was
ambitious, he was in earnest. He wished to make a name, he wished to
justify his existence by fruitful work. And he had worked hard. He had
put all his knowledge, all his talent, all his energy, into his work;
he had not spared himself; he had passed laborious days and studious
nights. And what remained to show for it? Three or four volumes upon
Political Economy, that had been read in their day a little, discussed
a little, and then quite forgotten--superseded by the books of newer
men. 'Pulped, pulped,' he reflected bitterly. Except for a stray dozen
of copies scattered here and there--in the British Museum, in his
College library, on his own bookshelves--his published writings had by
this time (he could not doubt) met with the common fate of
unappreciated literature, and been 'pulped.'

'Pulped--pulped; pulped--pulped.' The hateful word beat rhythmically
again and again in his tired brain; and for a little while that was
all he was conscious of.

So much for the work of his life. And for the rest? The play? The
living? Oh, he