The world, he found, was an oyster that he could not open. He had declined to try the usual kind of knife--that provided by custom for him, in the shape of an office stool. He had imbibed socialistic theories somehow in early boyhood, and his half-brother, Denzil Vanston, had from that moment assured him that he was lost. The late Squire Vanston, of Normansgrave, had made a foolish second marriage. He had been caught by a designing young woman whom he met at a Brighton hotel. While Felix was still a child, his father died, leaving the widow a life interest in the property. Poor Denzil had cause to feel displeasure. The second Mrs. Vanston filled the house with a crew of very second-rate journalists, music-hall artistes, and sporting men. Her son, Felix, was most imprudently indulged; her stepson, Denzil, had no home as long as she lived. His own mother had been the exact reverse of his father's second wife--a good, rather dull woman, affectionate and sincere, but hard and prim. Denzil, brought up on these lines, was unspeakably shocked by the proceedings which at Normansgrave followed his father's death. Mrs. Vanston was killed in a carriage accident, after a reckless ten years of very frivolous widowhood. This is putting the case with an extreme mildness, which the inhabitants of the neighborhood might class as euphemism. She died intestate, and was found to have spent the whole of the money which the Squire had left to her, with a view to its coming to Felix after her death. His will bequeathed all the property and all the money, with the exception of this sum, to his elder son. Felix was unprovided for. At this time he was eighteen years old, and studying at a Continental university. Oxford and Cambridge were not Bohemian enough for him. His brother was willing to make him an allowance, on condition of his qualifying for some profession; and although the only profession for which he would show interest was journalism, and though Denzil profoundly, and perhaps excusably, mistrusted journalism after his experience of his stepmother's set, he did help him, and did make him an allowance, until debts and irregular habits and bad associates convinced him that Felix would do no good until he had actually to work for his living. Actuated by the best intentions, the elder brother said he would stop supplies until Felix really buckled down to work. The next thing was that the police raided a Dynamite Club in Soho, and Felix was arrested, brought to trial, and convicted. He had served the greater part of his two years' sentence. And now the end had come. At the age of twenty-three Felix Vanston decided that life was not worth living.