Had the curtain risen on that back room, the eye would have taken but one glance to feel assured of destitution on the part of the absent occupier. There was a bed, a washstand, a table, a chair. There was a cupboard, the door hanging open on one hinge, revealing the fact that an empty mug formed its sole contents. There was no carpet on the floor, no cloth on the rickety table--the only trace of occupancy was in a penny bottle of ink and a few sheets of paper which lay upon the table. The smoke-dimmed window looked sheer down upon a mazy labyrinth of railway lines. Day by day trains rumbled by, and sent up each its contribution of soot and grime to choke the atmosphere and darken the unlovely prospect. This window--it was more correctly a glass door--was open; and without was a mean iron railing, with a flight of corroded steps, which, at the time the house was built, probably led to the garden. The encroaching line had shorn away all the garden, leaving the iron steps overhanging the abyss with a futility that moved to pity the soul of the present occupier when he had a thought to spare from the anguish of his own condition. So much for the stage. The actor, when at last he made his abrupt appearance, bursting in, as an actor should, dramatically, through the center doors--seemed to have been cast by Nature for a leading part. He was still young, and somewhat tall; and, though his cheeks were sunken, his eyes rimmed with red, his hair rough, his beard some days old, and his clothes soiled and ragged, he yet kept that air of the dominant race, that carriage of the head and movement of the shoulders that tells of the public school if not the university. But it was not merely this air of incongruity with environment which made him noticeable. It was a certain atmosphere that clothed him--a peculiar expression which cut him off from any other young man of his age and class--a quality of isolation which hung about him like some poisonous exhalation. The eyes of the young look forward. Not always with hope or eagerness; sometimes with apprehension, or terror, or anxiety. But, in some wise, they do look forward. Life, whether it be good or bad, is still to come. This man's eyes had ceased to travel on. He had done with life. He came into the room, as the last flicker of a flame may leap up in burnt paper. Though he still existed, hope and fear were alike dead in him. All was over: he had given up the contest with Fate. In no sense was he any longer a part of his surroundings. He had severed himself, by an act of will, from the struggle and the fret. His pilgrimage--evil and brief--was ended. He fastened the folding-doors behind him with deliberation, and, advancing to the table, laid down one or two packages upon it.