The thin young man, who had removed his hat, was glancing round the dingy walls of the room, and at the table in the centre that was strewn with books and papers. "My dear Byfield," he said, in his thin voice, "I might almost repeat that question to you. I am amazed, Byfield; I am pained and outraged. Why are you hiding in this place?"
Gilbert Byfield threw himself into his chair, and laughed. "No question of hiding," he said. "I came here for a change of air—change of scene—change of surroundings. I'm studying."
"What for?" demanded the visitor.
Byfield leant forward over the table, and looked at his friend half contemptuously, half whimsically. "The world I've left behind me," he said, "was peopled by quite a lot of men of the type of a certain Jordan Tant——"
"Thank you," said the other, with a nod.
"All very worthy and delightful people, but unfortunately all saying the same thing—day after day—year in and year out. They were always dressed in the same fashion, and they always had a certain considerable amount of respectable money in the pockets of their respectable clothes; and they always got up at exactly the same hour every morning, and they lived their dear little Tant-like lives, until the time came for them to be turned, in due course, into little Tant-like corpses, and presumably after that into nice little Tant-like angels. And I got tired of them, and finally gave them up. Now," he added, throwing himself back in his chair, and laughing good-humouredly, "you know all about it."
Mr. Jordan Tant had seated himself on a chair opposite his friend, and had been listening attentively. He now hitched his trousers up carefully over his knees, displaying rather neat ankles, and began to speak in an argumentative fashion, with his neat head a little on one side. "You're not complimentary, Byfield," he said; "but then you never were. I should not have found you, but for the fact that some one mentioned to me that you were living in a place called Arcadia Street, Islington; and as I wondered a little what reason you could possibly have for leaving your own natural surroundings, I decided to look you up. As for the Tant-like people of whom you speak so scornfully, I would remind you that they belong properly to that sphere to which you also belong, when you are not in your present revolutionary spirit. You are forgetting what I have endeavoured often to remind you about; you are forgetting the dividing line which must be kept between the classes and the masses. The world knows you as Mr. Gilbert Byfield—with any amount of money, and any amount of property; you are masquerading as a very ordinary person, in a very ordinary and commonplace neighbourhood. Now what, for instance, do you pay for these rooms?" He glanced round as he spoke.
"Ten shillings a week—which of course includes the use of the furniture," said Gilbert, smiling. "Meals extra."
"Horrible!" exclaimed his friend. "Where is the comfortable set of chambers in the West End; where is your place in the country—your yacht—everything of that kind? And what in the name of fortune are you doing it for?"
"I've already told you," responded the other, good-humouredly. "I wanted to see what life really was, when you didn't have someone near at hand to feed you, and clothe you, and make much of you; I wanted to look at a world where banking accounts and dividends were unknown, and stocks and shares something not to be considered. I wanted to see what people were like who had to scramble for a living—to scramble, in fact, for the crumbs that fall from tables such as mine. I had read in books of people who had a difficulty in making both ends meet—and quite nice people at that; I had dreamed of a world outside my own very ordinary one, where romance was to be found—and beauty—and love and tenderness. I was sick to death of the high voices and the gracious airs and the raised eyebrows of most of the women I knew—the time-killers, with nothing in the world to occupy them; I wanted to take off my coat, and get back to what I know my grandfather, at least, was in his time: a real hard-working citizen. A better man than ever I shall be, Jordan; a clear-headed, clear-hearted fellow, with no nonsense about him. He made a fortune—and my father trebled it; it has been my sacred mission to spend it. There"—he got to his feet, and stretched his arms above his head, and laughed—"I've done preaching; and you shall tell me all the news from the great world out of which I have dropped."