I

I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, aman ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning.

　　The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, itmay be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become anuncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to belooked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmthand optimism.

　　This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after theFletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The airwas heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning.

　　The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, andacross the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively alongthe pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to thescene.

　　I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after theemotions of the night had left me dispirited.

　　I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed toCynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as agreat surprise to me.

　　Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyselove: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task wasan answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do sofive years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself becarried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to beutterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was fiveyears younger then, and Audrey was--Audrey.

　　I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.

　　I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met AudreyBlake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstanceshad conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and Icould afford to have it. From the moment I came of age andrelieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself incomfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if,between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had oneunselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, mymemory is a blank on the point.

　　It was at the height of this period that I became engaged toAudrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself,impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribablyoffensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did notprevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was KingCophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'Thisbeggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in mymanner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artistwhom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by paintingan occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story,but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patentInfants' Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that BabyCried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to thepublic through the medium of Art, and Mr Blake would be commissionedto draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this veinwere to be found in the back pages of the magazines.