When Saturday night came he looked back over his week with regret and shame. The date fixed for his presenting his sketch to the manager was now only eight days off, and he was practically no further advanced in his preparation than on the day when his friend brought him the delightful news that that elusive personage had consented to make the appointment. He had wasted the past week in a foolish day-dream, as profitless as it was absurd. Yet he smiled to himself at the reflection that his day-dream had at least been amusing. It had been like creating a story or the plot for a play; and with a characteristically bachelor thought, he added to himself that it was at least less dangerous to play with visions of fortune than of love, and quite as sensible. He could not, on the whole, however, be satisfied with the result of his week, and he determined to have no more of this folly. He must set to work in earnest, and he resented the consciousness which forced itself upon him that his lonely life and imaginative turn made it possible for him to fall into vagaries which to the practical common-sense of mankind in general would be held to indicate anything but a sound mind. He started up suddenly and gathered all the papers upon which were recorded his unlucky stock transactions, and began to thrust them into the stove. He would make an end of the whole foolish business. And yet, so far from entirely burning his ships, he at least left for himself a little boat in which to continue his explorations into the delusive regions of financial fairy-land, since he saved the one slip which contained the statement of the present condition of his much-diminished fortune. He condescended to the weak, but eminently human trick of attempting to humbug himself in regard to his reasons for doing so. He said to himself, exactly as if he were explaining to another person, that the bit of paper would serve as a warning to him, should he ever be tempted to indulge in so idiotic a diversion again; and he added, as if to quiet the least suspicion that he meant to use the memorandum, that the morrow being Sunday there would be no market with which he could play.