‘One sees that you have been breathed upon by democracy.’
‘I loathe the word and the thing even more than I did, which is saying a good deal.’
‘Be it so. You say you are going to work?’
‘Yes, I have come back to work. Even now, it’s difficult to realise that I must work or starve. I understand how fellows who have unexpectedly lost their income go through life sponging on relatives and friends. I understand how an educated man goes sinking through all the social grades, down to the common lodging-house and the infirmary. And I honestly believe there’s only one thing that saves me from doing likewise.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I can’t tell you—not yet, at all events.’
‘I always thought you a very fine specimen of the man born to do nothing,’ said Munden, with that smile which permitted him a surprising candour in conversation.
‘And you were quite right,’ returned Tarrant, with a laugh. ‘I am a born artist in indolence. It’s the pity of pities that circumstances will frustrate Nature’s purpose.’
‘You think you can support yourself by journalism?’
‘I must try.—Run your eye over that.’