"Are you in such a deuce of a hurry? Well, all right; I will find it somehow. But now go to bed, for I am sleepy; we made a night of it. To-morrow I am sure I can help you. And, at any rate, I will not leave you in a fix; that you may rely on. But you are a troublesome boy. Do you hear? Only the other day you had thirty pounds, and then, again, thirty more!" For a minute Van Maeren stood rigid, a dark mass against the dim gleam of the nightlight. Then he went up to the bed, and, falling on his knees, laid his head on the coverlet and fairly sobbed. "I say, are you ill? Are you gone crazy?" asked Westhove. "What on earth ails you?" No, he was not crazy, but only so grieved to take advantage of Frank's good nature, especially if his friend was himself in difficulties. They were such shameful debts--he would rather not tell him what for. Debts outstanding from a time when for a few days he had disappeared. Frank knew, didn't he? "Old sins to pay for, eh? Well, behave better for the future. We will set it all right to-morrow. Make no more noise, and go to bed. I am dead sleepy; we all had as much as we could carry. Come, get up, I say." Van Maeren rose, and taking Westhove's hand, tried to thank him. "There, that will do--go to bed, I say." And he went. In his own room he presently, through the wall, heard Frank snoring. He remained sitting on the edge of his bed. Once more his fingers gripped his throat--tighter--tighter. But it hurt him--made his head ache. "Great God!" he thought. "Is it possible that I should be the thing I am?" PART IV. I. A life of wandering for two years and more, of voyages from America to Australia, from Australia back to Europe; painfully restless, finding no new aims in life, no new reason for their own existence, no new thing in the countries they traversed or in the various atmospheres they breathed. A life at first without the struggle for existence, dragged out by each under the weight of his own woe; with many regrets, but no anxiety as to the material burden of existence. But presently there was the growing dread of that material burden, the unpleasant consciousness that there was no more money coming out from home, month after month; disagreeable transactions with bankers in distant places, constant letter-writing to and fro; in short, the almost total evaporation of a fortune of which too much had long since been dissipated in golden vapour. Then they saw the necessity of looking about them for means of subsistence, and they had taken work in factories, assurance offices, brokers' ware-houses and what not, simply to keep their heads above water in this life which they found so aimless and wretched.