He looked at Joyce, as he spoke, out of pale-blue, unspeculative eyes, and returned the tobacco-pouch. “You had better take another fill or two, while you are about it,” said Joyce. “I don’t like to trespass upon your generosity,” said Noakes. But he helped himself plentifully, tying up the tobacco in his pocket-handkerchief. They smoked on during a long silence, broken only by the click of the billiard-balls, the monotonous cry of the marker, and occasional murmurs of applause. The air was heavy with drink and tobacco-smoke, fresh and stale. “I must be getting back to work,” said Noakes at last. The word roused Joyce from the lethargy into which he had fallen. He had never associated Noakes with definite employment. For a moment he envied him. “I wish to heaven I could,” he said. “A man of your attainments,” replied Noakes, respectfully, “ought never to be at a loss. Now I should say you have been to a public school?” Joyce nodded. “And the university?” Joyce did not reply, but Noakes went on: “Yes; one can see it. Somehow a man of acute observation can always tell. I remember your correcting me the other night when I spoke of Plato’s dramatic unities. I looked up the matter in the British Museum, and found that you were right in attributing them to Aristotle. As I said before, a man of your education ought to have no difficulty.” “You might suggest something,” said Joyce, with a shade of irony. “Authorship.” “Are you an author?” “With all due modesty, I may say that I am,” returned Noakes, gravely. “I don’t find it very remunerative, but I attribute that solely to the deficiencies in my education.” “What do you write?” asked Joyce, interested in spite of himself in this odd, pathetic figure. “I have adopted two branches of the profession--one, the literary advertisement; the other, popular fiction.” He drew a halfpenny evening paper from his pocket, and, designating a half-column with his thumb, handed it to Joyce. It was headlined “Nihilism in Russia,” opened with an account of Siberian horrors, and ended, of course, with somebody’s pills. “I always pride myself upon there being more literary quality in my work than is usually given to that class of thing,” he remarked complacently, while Joyce idly ran through the column. “And in my fiction I always try to keep the best models before me, Stevenson and Mayne Reid. I happen to have a copy of one of my latest works in my pocket. Perhaps it might interest you to glance through it. In return for the tobacco,--with the author’s compliments.” Joyce received into his hands a thin volume in a gaudy paper wrapper. It was entitled “The Doom of the Floating Fiend.” The printing, in packed double-column, and the paper were execrable. The author’s name did not figure beneath the title. From the most cursory glance through the pages, Joyce could see they were deluged in blood. “I shall be glad to read it,” he said, mendaciously, putting it into his pocket.