The climax for which I had been so long and so ignorantly waiting came in dramatic fashion. Not, of course, as I had expected it to come, for to tell the plain simple truth I had for a long time thought that it would arrive by my falling dead in the street, and I exercised my imagination continually on the possible scenes afterwards. There was nothing much to wonder at in this for I almost always felt at this time as if I was, as the Spaniards say, _Gastados_, used up, had nothing at all left inside. But on this eventful evening I was working away as usual, "fitting up," in trade terms, at my glass cutting bench, when, without the slightest warning, the whole ceiling of the shop fell down, from wall to wall it tore away in one great mass of rotten plaster, smashing everything in its fall and filling the shop with dust and ruin. An earthquake could not have been more comprehensive as regards the internal fittings of the shop. My blessings upon the loafing scoundrels who slapped that rubbish up against the laths above, entirely careless of what happened as long as it stuck there till they got their money. They did me better service than they ever dreamed of. A big chunk of plaster having hit me on the head I was for a moment dazed and partly suffocated by the dust as well, but I saw my broken lamps flaring up towards the network of tindery laths above, and instinctively I dropped on my hands and knees to grope my way to the gas meter. I got rather badly cut, but I found the meter and turned off the gas, just in time to save the house from catching fire. I can hear some cynic say, "Silly ass, why didn't he let it catch fire and burn down, he could have made a bit out of it then." Perhaps so, but I was not prepared to make a bit, and I had trained myself in habits of honesty (now don't laugh, for many people do, and I am no great exception) so that my first and only thought at that juncture was to prevent the greater calamity of fire. Groping my way back along the counter, the dust having somewhat subsided I saw my wife, white and trembling, at the door of the shop parlour. On a sudden impulse I laughed loudly. In that instant I saw that the long looked for deliverance had come at last. But she said, "Oh, what's the matter? Are you all right?" meaning was I sane. I answered cheerily, "No doubt about that. I'm all right, and for good or evil I've done with this business. This means a full stop. I can't go on, however much I might want to."