finished," he said. "Please don't hurry. I hate to
eat alone. It is a whim of mine. If I eat alone I read, and if I read
I get dyspepsia. Try the oat biscuits and the Camembert."

Douglas did as the newcomer had suggested.

"I am in no hurry," he said. "I have nothing to do, nor anywhere to
go."

"Lucky man!"

"You speak as though that were unusual," Douglas laughed, "but I was
just thinking that every one here seems to be in the same state. Some
one once told me that London was a city of sadness. Who could watch the
people here and say so?"

The newcomer screwed in his eyeglass and looked deliberately round the
room.

"Well," he said, "this is a resort of the poor, and the poor are seldom
sad. It is the unfortunate West-Enders who carry the burdens of wealth
and the obligation of position, who have earned for us the reproach of
dulness. Here we are on the threshold of Bohemia. Long life and health
to it."

He drank a glass of Chianti with the air of a connoisseur tasting some
rare vintage.

Douglas laughed softly.

"If the people here are poor," he said, "what about me? I pawned my
watch because I had had nothing to eat since yesterday."

His new friend sighed and stuck his fork into an olive.

"What affluence," he sighed, meditatively. "I have not possessed a
watch for a year, and I've only ninepence in my pocket. They give me
tick here. Foolish Spargetti. Long may their confidence last!"

A companion in impecuniosity. Douglas looked at his neat clothes and
the flower in his buttonhole, and wondered.

"But you have the means of making money if you care to."

"Have I?" The eyeglass was carefully removed, the small wizened face
assumed a lugubrious aspect. "My friend," he said, "in a measure it is
true--but such a small measure. A cold-blooded and unappreciative
editor apprises my services at the miserable sum of three pounds a week.
I have heard of people who have lived upon that sum, but I must confess
that I never met one."

"You are a writer, then?" Douglas exclaimed, eagerly.

"I am a sort of hack upon the staff of the _Ibex_. They set me down in
a corner of the office and throw me scraps of work, as you would bones
to a dog. It is not dignified, but one must eat and drink--not to
mention smoking. Permit me, by-the-bye, to offer you a cigarette, and
to recommend the coffee. I taught Spargetti how to make it myself."

Douglas was listening with flushed cheeks. The _Ibex_! What a
coincidence!