They walked around Piccadilly Circus, edging their way through the women, that the sultry night had brought out in white dresses. It was a midnight of white dresses and fine dust; the street was as clean as a ball-room; like a pure dream the moon soared through the azure infinities, whitening the roadway; the cabmen loitered, following those who showed disposition to pair; groups gathered round the lamp-posts, and were dispersed by stalwart policemen. "Move on, move on, if you please, gentlemen!"
Frank told Mike about the children. He had now a boy five years old, "such a handsome fellow, and he can read as well as you or I can. He's down at the sea-side now with his mother. He wrote me such a clever letter, telling me he had just finished Robinson Crusoe, and was going to make a start on Gulliver's Travels. I'm crazy about my boy. Talk of being tired of living, my trouble is that I shall have to leave him one day."
Mike thought Frank's love of his son charming, and he regretted he could find in his own heart no such simple sentiments! Every now and then he turned to look after a girl, and pulling his moustache, muttered—
"Not bad!"
"Well, don't let's say anything more about it. When will you come and see us?"
"What day will suit you—some day next week?"
"Yes, I'm always in in the evening; will you come to dinner?"
Mike replied evasively, anxious not to commit himself to a promise for any day. Then seeing that Frank thought he did not care to dine with him, he said—
"Very well, let us say Wednesday."
He bade his friend good-night, and stood on the edge of the pavement watching him make his way across the street to catch the last omnibus. Mike's mind filled with memories of Frank. They came from afar, surging over the shores of youth, thundering along the cliffs of manhood. Out of the remote regions of boyhood they came, white crests uplifted, merging and mingling in the waters of life. It seemed to Mike that, like sea-weed, he and Frank had been washed together, and they then had been washed apart. That was life, and that was the result of life, that and nothing more. And of every adventure Frank was the most distinctly realizable; all else, even Lily, was a little shadow that had come and gone. John had lost himself in religion, Frank had lost himself in his wife and child. To lose yourself, that is the end to strive for; absorption in religion or in the family. They had attained it, he had failed. All the love and all the wealth fortune had poured upon him had not enabled him to stir from or change that entity which he knew as Mike Fletcher. Ten years ago he had not a shilling to his credit, to-day he had several thousands, but the irreparable had not altered—he was still Mike Fletcher. He had wandered over the world; he had lain in the arms of a hundred women, and nothing remained of it all but Mike Fletcher. There was apparently no escape; he was lashed to himself like the convict to the oar. For him there was nothing but this oar, and all the jewelry that had been expended upon it had not made it anything but an oar. There was a curse upon it all.