To be unhappy and alone at night in chambers is to have an opportunity of realising the sense of desolation in its bitterest degree. The double doors and double windows which secure the stillness that is of so much importance for working purposes, seem now to shut you off doubly from the world; from help if you are dying, and from sympathy if you live. The rumble of the heaviest wagon reaches the ears as a faint sound from afar off; no footstep is heard at all; and the adjacent chambers are silent as the tenements of the dead. You welcome the plash of rain against the window-panes—dull as that is—as if it were a friend come to speak to you in your solitude. That is the time for thoughts of suicide to haunt a man if his mind is disturbed; and that is the time for cynical broodings on the vanity of life, the falsehood of friendship, and the fickleness of love. He sees in what miserable failure his most earnest efforts have resulted; he misinterprets the most trivial word and look of his friend, and he loses grip altogether of that faith which in healthier state enables him to find consolation in love. He recalls all the bitter things that have been written about women, and for the time-being believes them. How was it, Philip asked himself, that he had fallen into this desperate position? He had laboured with all his might for others rather than for himself; his object was a noble one, and quite feasible, he was still convinced. Yet the social revolution he had dreamed of was as far off as ever, and he suddenly found that he was face to face with absolute ruin. Evidently his blunder lay in his miscalculation of the power of his capital. There had been disappointments with his fellow-workers, who, shrewdly counting the cost of material and the market value of the manufactured article, saw that the latter would barely realise enough to give them a fair ordinary wage in the best of times, to say nothing of the share of profits promised them. The cost of material was too high; and it was natural that they should conclude the cost was so fixed by arrangement with their chief in order to deprive them of what they now called their rights. Philip saw the force of their argument, and began to inquire about the items of expenditure. Hitherto, he had been so deeply occupied in the organisation of his scheme, that he had left financial matters almost entirely in Wrentham’s hands. Hints were given him that the prices he was charged were not the prices paid for materials, but that a large proportion went in secret commissions. As soon as he began to look into the question closely, he was met by the astounding fact, that he had reached the end of his capital, and had heavy liabilities to meet almost immediately, as well as heavy current expenses to provide for. How to do this without applying to Mr Shield, he had been trying for weeks to find out; and the more harassed he became, the more impossible it appeared to work through the mess without assistance.