merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward
downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals.
Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving
spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind,
or tropic birds.

He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a
debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough
defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a
fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life
which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got
something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained,
but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."

And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act
of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust.
He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide
which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save
him a scrap of dignity--and such a sorry scrap!--would be going to the
devil by the shortest way.

He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that
seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he
had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that
would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited
to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.

Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing
something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to
be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed
fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be
different. If he got _anything_ he should not feel so wastefully
thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain
afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if
credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world
he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not--what it
was in truth--an idiotic state of nerves.

At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he
swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he
closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his,
Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had
clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's littl