This had been his sole motive for rejecting the proffered generosity of Bundy. And there were others beside Bundy, the friends and acquaintances of his prosperity, who would gladly have given him a helping hand. But, since he could not wholly recover his old position, he scorned a partial reclamation. To move before the eyes of these former friends shorn of his power, narrowed, limited, perhaps pitied, was a thing impossible. Better far to leave the arena for ever, and leave it with a proud disdain. Exile was less painful than toleration. The exile may at least keep his pride; but what pride is possible to the broken supernumerary who "lags superfluous on the stage"? "No," he said, when Bundy pressed him to accept his help, "I can't do it. I know you mean it kindly; but I can't." "But why not?" "You wouldn't understand if I told you." "I understand you're the most obstinate man I ever met," said Bundy, with a touch of indignant heat. "Obstinate? Well, p'raps so. We'll let it go at that. Yes, I'm obstinate." And his smile was so grim and tragic that Bundy said no more. It was one of the curious features of his situation that the house he chose to live in at Tottenham was a triumph of architectural mendacity; the same kind of house, in fact, as those with which he himself had disfigured London, but some grades lower than his own flimsiest performances. The doors were badly hung and would not close; the wainscots, fashioned of green wood, were already shrunken; the window frames rattled and let in the cold air; the chimneys smoked; the ceiling plaster was already in process of disintegration; there was nothing in the house that was not eloquent of fraud. Perhaps he had been moved by the spirit of irony in the selection of such a house as his final habitation. He might have lived elsewhere; but nowhere else could he have gratified his perversity with such completeness. Grimes employed him; well, let him live in one of Grimes's houses too; in doing so he anticipated the world's laughter by laughing himself. "He's a holy terror, is Grimes," he would remark. "I thought I knew how to build a thirty-pound house myself pretty well; but Grimes beats me hands down. He can give me points every time." And then he would recapitulate with sardonic skill all the building tricks of which Grimes had been guilty, specifying each with bitter humour. "I did sometimes use sand in my mortar; but Grimes uses mud--mere road mud at that. And I did put down drains of some sort; but Grimes beats me there--he don't appear to have heard of drains. And his party-walls, holy Moses! I believe if I spat at them they'd fall down." When Arthur came home in the evening, he would meet him at the door with ironic warnings.