some
black coated, pallid man, who passed through the gate, and then with
quick nervous steps walked towards the station. The 8.30 was their
train; though in some very rare cases the 9.3 was early enough. . . .
But as a rule the 9.3 crowd did not live in Culman Terrace. Just a few
only, who had come there young and eager, and had died there. True,
they caught the 9.3, but they were dead. And the pretty laughing girls
who had married them when the lamp was burning with the divine fire of
hope, had watched them die . . . hopelessly, helplessly. . . . Love
will stand most things; but the drab monotony of the successful
failure--the two hundred pound a year man who has to keep up
appearances--tries it very high. . . .

Some of them turned into shrews and nagged; some of them ran to fat and
didn't care; but most of them just sank quietly and imperceptibly into
the dreariness and smallness of their surroundings. At rare intervals
there flashed across their horizon something of the great teeming world
outside; they went to a bargain sale, perhaps, and saw the King drive
past--or they went to the movies and for a space lived in the Land of
Make Believe. . . . But the coils of Culman Terrace had them fast, and
the excitement was only momentary--the relapse the more complete. And,
dear Heavens, with what high ideals they had all started. . . . It
struck Vane as he walked slowly along the road that here, on each side
of him, lay the Big Tragedy--bigger far than in the vilest slum. For
in the slum they had never known or thought of anything better. . . .

Odd curtains were pulled aside as he walked, and he felt conscious of
people staring at him. He pictured them getting up from their chairs,
and peering at him curiously, wondering where he was going--what he was
doing--who he was. . . . It was the afternoon's excitement--a wounded
officer passing the house.

A familiar singing noise behind him made him look round and whistle.
Long experience left no doubt as to what was happening, and when he saw
Binks on his toes, circling round a gate on which a cat was spitting
angrily, he called "Binks" sharply once, and walked on again. It was
the greatest strain Binks was ever called on to face, but after a
moment of indecision he obeyed as usual. Cats were his passion; but
ever since he had carried the Colonel's wife's prize Persian on to
parade and deposited it at Vane's feet he was discreet in the matter.
The infuriated p