The road was deserted. We were alone. I drew her face to mine and kissed her. My love for her grows daily. Old Gunton-Cresswell has introduced me to a big firm of linoleum manufacturers. I am taking over their huge system of advertising next week. My salary will be enormous. It almost frightens me. Old Mr. Cresswell tells me that he had had the job in his mind for me for some time, and had, indeed, mentioned to his wife and Eva at lunch that day that he intended to write to me about it. I am more grateful to him than I can ever make him understand. Eva, I know, cares nothing for money—she told me so—but it is a comfort to feel that I can keep her almost in luxury. I have given up my rooms in Rupert Street. I sleep in a bed. I do Sandow exercises. I am always down to breakfast at eight-thirty sharp. I smoke less. I am the happiest man on earth. _(End of Julian Eversleigh’s narrative.)_ Narrative Resumed by James Orlebar Cloyster CHAPTER 24 A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS O perfidy of woman! O feminine inconstancy! That is the only allusion I shall permit to escape me on the subject of Eva Eversleigh’s engagement to that scoundrel Julian. I had the news by telegraph, and the heavens darkened above me, whilst the solid earth rocked below. I had been trapped into dishonour, and even the bait had been withheld from me. But it was not the loss of Eva that troubled me most. It should have outweighed all my other misfortunes and made them seem of no account, but it did not. Man is essentially a materialist. The prospect of an empty stomach is more serious to him than a broken heart. A broken heart is the luxury of the well-to-do. What troubled me more than all other things at this juncture was the thought that I was face to face with starvation, and that only the grimmest of fights could enable me to avoid it. I quaked at the prospect. The early struggles of the writer to keep his head above water form an experience which does not bear repetition. The hopeless feeling of chipping a little niche for oneself out of the solid rock with a nib is a nightmare even in times of prosperity. I remembered the grey days of my literary apprenticeship, and I shivered at the thought that I must go through them again. I examined my position dispassionately over a cup of coffee at Groom’s, in Fleet Street. Groom’s was a recognised _Orb rendezvous_. When I was doing “On Your Way,” one or two of us used to go down Fleet Street for coffee after the morning’s work with the regularity of machines. It formed a recognised break in the day.