As he walked eastwards he was composing his farewell letters, he was picturing to himself the sorrow of his friends. They would talk of him wonderingly, as a brilliant life promising great things, gone with its work undone. They would recall his sweetness, the glow of his bright youth ... the tears came into his eyes at the idea, it was so pathetic a picture. His thoughts had run so long in the same groove, that though he felt dimly that there ought to be other and deeper feelings within him, he was unable to evoke them. He was conscious that this dainty picturing was utterly false; yet, try as he would, he could not stop it. Whether it was the last flicker of intense vanity, or merely that his mind was weakened by debauchery, it is impossible to say; but when a man plays unhealthy tricks with his mind, and is for ever feeling his spiritual muscles, the habit holds him fast as in a vice. His last hours possess a strange psychological interest. He walked eastwards mechanically, but stopped when he had turned into Houndsditch, and the roar of the early traffic in Bishopsgate sounded less loudly. From a card hanging in a pawnbroker's window he saw a bedroom was to let, and after paying the rent in advance, he was allowed to take possession. He lit the oil-stove that did duty for a fire, and lay down, falling into a heavy, dreamless sleep. When he woke it was quite dark, and after washing his hands he went to a low eating-house for a last meal. The _menu_ was pasted on the window in strips, while a cabbage-laden steam floated out of the half-open door. The room was long and low of ceiling, each table standing in a separate partition. A large woman, dressed in a scarlet silk blouse, walked up and down the centre gangway, taking the orders, which she shouted out in a hoarse voice to the open kitchen at the far end. "Pudding and peas!" "Roast, Yorkshire, and baked!" The table at which Gobion sat was covered with oil-cloth, and as he moved a saucer full of salt out of the way of his elbow, a many-legged insect ran over it to a crack in the wall. The woman brought him the food, not giving him a knife and fork till he had paid for what he had ordered. He noticed her hands were red and misshapen, with long, black nails. He ate ravenously. Over the low partition he could see a Jew jerking some rich, steaming mess into his mouth with a curious twist of the wrist, and every now and again wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. These details fascinated him. When he had done, he asked for some paper, and with the roar of Whitechapel surging outside he began to write to Scott. "MY DEAR, DEAR OLD MAN, Forgive me for what I am going to do. Life seems to me----"