had been the salt of his life. Steadily, sturdily, almost
insolently, he had thrust his way through to the front ranks. In many
respects those were singular and unusual elements which had gone to
the making of his success. His had not been the victory of honied
falsehoods, of suave deceit, of gentle but legalised robbery. He had
been a hard worker, a daring speculator with nerves of iron, and courage
which would have glorified a nobler cause. Nor had his been the methods
of good fellowship, the sharing of "good turns," the camaraderie of
finance. The men with whom he had had large dealings he had treated as
enemies rather than friends, ever watching them covertly with close but
unslackening vigilance. And now, for the present at any rate it was all
over. There had come a pause in his life. His back was to the City and
his face was set towards an unknown world. Half unconsciously he had
undertaken a little voyage of exploration.

From the Strand he crossed Trafalgar Square into Pall Mall, and up the
Haymarket into Piccadilly. He was very soon aware that he had wandered
into a world whose ways were not his ways and with whom he had no
kinship. Yet he set himself sedulously to observe them, conscious that
what he saw represented a very large side of life. From the first he
was aware of a certain difference in himself and his ways. The careless
glance of a lounger on the pavement of Pall Mall filled him with a
sudden anger. The man was wearing gloves, an article of dress which
Trent ignored, and smoking a cigarette, which he loathed. Trent was
carelessly dressed in a tweed suit and red tie, his critic wore a silk
hat and frock coat, patent-leather boots, and a dark tie of invisible
pattern. Yet Trent knew that he was a type of that class which would
look upon him as an outsider, and a black sheep, until he had bought his
standing. They would expect him to conform to their type, to learn to
speak their jargon, to think with their puny brains and to see with
their short-sighted eyes. At the "Criterion" he turned in and had a
drink, and, bolder for the wine which he had swallowed at a gulp, he
told himself that he would do nothing of the sort. He would not alter
a jot. They must take him as he was, or leave him. He suffered his
thoughts to dwell for a moment upon his wealth, on the years which had
gone to the winning of it, on a certain nameless day, the memory of
which even now sent sometimes the blood running colder through