“They shan’t lead me—they shan’t! they shan’t!”
It was the wail of a little boy rather than of a man who fain would be a king.
He returned to his room in Endell Street and flung himself face downward on the bed, where he lay with heaving shoulders for a long, long while. Presently he turned round and sat bolt upright.
“Everybody is against me, and I’m against everybody.”
On the table before him was a heap of books and a pile of papers, odd jottings, queer little articles, scraps of poetry written in the after-theatre hours. With a sudden fury he kicked at the table-leg and sent them tumbling and fluttering to the floor.
“Why do I hate the world when I want to exalt it? Oh, God—God—God! Damn this room! Oh, I’m lonely, I am so—so horribly lonely!”
He went and stood in the corner, rested his head on the faded wallpaper, and sniffed:
“I’m lonely—lonely—lonely—lonely—lonely! I don’t think I’m very strong—I think I’m ill—ill and lonely—lonely and ill—very ill, and very lonely!”
Then suddenly he burst out laughing:
“Fool!—idiot!—I’m all right! Papers all over the place. Pick ’em up. What’s all this rot about?” He read a few lines in his own handwriting: “A good sort is the type of man with whom we trust our sisters—a bad sort is the type of man with whom our sisters trust themselves!’ Epigram! Too long! ‘A sport is a man who says Cherio, and carries his brains in a cigarette case.’ Necktie would be better. Oh! what’s the good of writing this rubbish? What am I going to do now?”