"I was pretty well educated, and if you don't stay too long they will let you read the books in the Holywell Street stalls."
"And you wasted your money buying my books," said I with a lump the size of a bolster in my throat.
"I got them second-hand, four and sixpence," said he, "and some I borrowed."
Then I collapsed. I didn't weep, but I took the tragedy and put it in the fire, and called myself every name that I knew.
This caused the young man to sob audibly, partly from emotion and partly from lack of food.
I took off my hat to him before I showed him out, and we went to a restaurant and I arranged things generally on a financial basis.
Would that I could let the tale stop here. But I cannot.
Three days later a man came to see me on business, an objectionable man of uncompromising truth. Just before he departed he said: "D' you know anything about the struggling author of a tragedy called 'The Betrayal of Confidences'?"
"Yes," said I. "One of the few poor souls who in the teeth of grinding poverty keep alight."
"At the back of Tarporley Mews," said he. "On eleven shillings a week."