sion in which Paul found himself he had
met with many such instances of awful poverty. He had brushed elbows
with Need himself. That morning he had given, out of his scanty
resources, her railway fare to a tearful and despairing girl who played
the low-comedy part. But he had not yet come across any position quite
so untenable as that of Wilmer. Forty odd years old, a wife, five
children, all his life given honestly to his calling--and threepence
half-penny to his fortune.

"But, good God!" said he, after a pause, "your kiddies? If you have
nothing--what will happen to them?"

"Lord knows," groaned Wilmer, staring in front of him, his elbows on
the back of the chair and his head between his fists.

"And Mrs. Wilmer and yourself have got to get back to London."

"I've got the dress suit I wear in the last act. It's fairly new. I can
get enough on it."

"But that's part of your outfit--your line of business; you'll want it
again," said Paul.

Wilmer had played butlers up and down the land for many years. Now and
again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he
obtained London engagements. He was one of the known stage butlers.

"I can hire if I'm pushed," said he. "It's hell, isn't it? Something
told me not to go out with a fit-up. We'd never come down to it before.
And I mistrusted Larkins--but we were out six months. Paul, my boy,
chuck it. You're young; you're clever; you've had a swell education;
you come of gentlefolk--my father kept a small hardware shop in
Leicester--you have"--the smitten and generally inarticulate man
hesitated--"well, you have extraordinary personal beauty; you have
charm; you could do anything you like in the world, save act--and you
can't act for toffee. Why the blazes do you stick to it?"

"I've got to earn my living just like you," said Paul, greatly
flattered by the artless tribute to his aristocratic personality and
not offended by the professional censure which he knew to be just.
"I've tried all sorts of other things-music, painting, poetry,
novel-writing--but none of them has come off."

"Your people don't make you an allowance?"

"I've no people living," said Paul, with a smile--and when Paul smiled
it was as if Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean
Hermes; and then with an outburst half sincere, half braggart--"I've
been on my own ever since I was thirteen."

Wilmer regarded him wearily. "The missus and I have always thought you
were bo