It is very curious how often the unintentional movements of other men concur in making a crisis in an individual life. When Edgar went to his club that evening he knew no reason why anything unusual should happen to him. His mind had been roused by sudden anxiety, that anxiety which, seizing a man all at once upon one particular point, throws a veil over everything by so doing, and showed yellowness or blackness into the common light; but he had no reason to suspect that any new light would come to him, or any new interest into his life, when he went dully and with a headache to his habitual seat at his habitual table and ate his dinner, which was not of a very elaborate character. There were more men than usual in the club that evening, and when Edgar had finished his dinner he went into the library, not feeling disposed for the long walk through the lighted streets with which he so often ended his evening. He took a book, but he was not in the mood to read. Several men nodded to him as they came and went; one, newly arrived, who had not seen him since his downfall, came up eagerly and talked for ten minutes before he went out. The man was nobody in particular, yet his friendliness was consolatory, and restored to Edgar some confidence in his own identity, which had seemed to be dropping from him. He put up his book before him when he was left again alone, and behind this shield looked at his companions, of whom he knew nothing or next to nothing. One of the people whom he thus unconsciously watched was a man whom he had already noted on several evenings lately, and as to whose condition he was in some perplexity. The first evening Edgar had half stumbled over him with the idea that he was one of the servants, and in the glance of identification with which he begged pardon, decided that, though not one of the servants, he must be a shopkeeper, perhaps well off and retired, whom somebody had introduced, or who had been admitted by one of those chances which permit the rich to enter everywhere. Next evening when he saw the same man again, he rubbed out as it were with his finger the word shopkeeper, which he had, so to speak, written across him, and wrote “city-man” instead. A city-man may be anything; he may be what penny-a-liners call a merchant prince, without losing the characteristic features of his class. This man was about forty-five, he had a long face, with good but commonplace features, hair getting scanty on the top, and brown whiskers growing long into two points, after the fashion of the day. The first time he was in evening dress, having come in after dinner, which was the reason why Edgar took him for one of the attendants. The next time he was in less elaborate costume, and looked better; for evening dress is trying to a man who has not the _air noble_ which christianizes those hideous garments. The third night again, Edgar, in imagination, drew a pen through the word “city-man,” and