He was alarmed to discover that his control of his hands was none too good. They moved more quickly than he meant them to, and in jerks.
Too, the notion of shaving his moustache struck him weakness, an impulse to be resisted. Too much like retreating. Subtly like that.
He put the razor back in its drawer.
In the centre of the living-room rug, standing there, stiffly, he said:—
'I'll face them. I'll go down fighting. They shan't say I surrendered.'
He walked round and round the room.
He had never in his life felt anything like this jerky nervousness. A restlessness that wouldn't permit him so much as to sit down.
While in the Gleaner office he had hardly been aware of McGibbon. He certainly hadn't listened to him.
But now, like a blow, everything McGibbon had said came to him. Every syllable. Suddenly he could see the man, towering ever him, pounding his desk. Talking—talking—full of fresh hopes while the world crumbled around him. More disaster! It was the buzzing song of the old globe as it spun endlessly on its axis. Disaster!... The advertisers had at last combined against the paper. Old Weston had called McGibbon's note. That must have taken about the last of Henry's thousand. They were broke.
His hand brushed his coat pocket. It bulged with copy paper. He must have thrust it back there absently, at the office.