And Maurice Mangan, in his aimless, desultory fashion, was inveighing against the vanity of the life led by certain classes in the great Babylon out of which he had just haled his rather unwilling friend; and describing their mad and frantic efforts to wrest themselves free of the demon _ennui_; and their ceaseless, eager clamor for hurry and excitement, lest, in some unguarded moment of silence, their souls should speak. "It is quite a fallacy," he was saying, as he walked carelessly onwards, his head thrown forward a little, his hands clasped behind his back, his stick trailing after him, "it is altogether a fallacy to talk of the 'complaining millions of men' who 'darken in labor and pain.' It is the hard-working millions of mankind who are the happiest; their constant labor brings content; the riddle of the painful earth doesn't vex them--they have no leisure; they don't fear the hour of sleep--they welcome it. It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself, Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to lighten the unbearable weariness of their life. Well," he continued, in his rambling way, "it isn't quite what I had looked forward to; I had looked forward to something different for you. I can remember, when we used to have our long Sunday walks in those days, what splendid ambitions you had for yourself, and how you were all burning to begin--the organist of Winstead Church was to produce his Hallelujah Chorus, and the nations were to listen; and the other night, when I was in your room at the theatre, when I saw you smearing your face and decking yourself out for exhibition before a lot of fashionable idlers, I could not help saying to myself, 'And this is what Linn Moore has come to!'" "Yes, that is what Linn Moore has come to," the other said, with entire good-nature. "And what has Maurice Mangan come to? I can remember when Maurice Mangan was to be a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great--I don't know what. Winstead was far too small a place for him; he was to go up and conquer London, and do great and wonderful things. And what is he now?--a reporter of the gabble of the House of Commons." "I suppose I am a failure," said this tall, thin, contemplative-looking man, who spoke quite dispassionately of himself, just as he spoke with a transparent honesty and simplicity of his friend. "But at least I have kept myself to myself. I haven't sold myself over to the Moloch of fashion--"