On the platform beyond the barriers he met McKay again.
“Good-bye, McKay,” he said. “I have only two friends in the world who know my story, and you are one.”
“Good-bye, old man,” said McKay. “Better luck next time.”
They shook hands and parted, McKay to join his friend Blake at the lodgings they had secured already, Joyce to put up for the night at the first cheap hotel he could find.
The next day he was in London again, in his old room in Pimlico—a broken-hearted, broken-spirited man. For two days he remained in a state of stupid misery, yearning for the life he had just abandoned; tortured, too, by reproaches for his cowardice. Why had he not faced the ignominy, and tried to live it down? Then the conviction of the hopelessness of the attempt was forced upon him. Even if he had continued in the profession, his name would soon have been known throughout it as the ex-convict,—and he had been in it long enough to perceive how narrow the theatrical circle is,—and all hope of advancement would have been worse than futile. On the third day he went to see Yvonne, but she had just gone out of town. The porter at the flat did not know how long she would be away. She was at Fulminster. Her letters were forwarded there. So Joyce wrote her a short note, explaining his situation, and set himself to wait patiently for her coming.
But on that evening, out of sheer weariness and longing for human companionship, he turned into his old haunt, the billiard-room in Westminster. It seemed just the same as on the last evening he had been there. The occupants of the divan might never have moved from that night to this. His appearance was greeted with incurious, uninterested nods. The only one that offered his hand was Noakes, who was sitting at the end, still in his Chesterfield overcoat and old curly silk hat, but looking more woe-begone and pallid than ever. There was a touch of pain, too, in his usually expressionless pale-blue eyes. Joyce took his seat next to him and bent forward, elbows on knees and chin resting in his hands.
“You have been absent from town?” asked Noakes, in his precise, toneless way.
Joyce nodded, with a murmur of assent.
“I, too, have not been here lately.”
“Press of literary work?” asked Joyce, without looking up.