“Clothes,” said Ferrand, when he had drunk, “are what I want. These are really not good enough.” The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home. While the latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two portmanteaus. This done, he waited for his visitor's return. The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent of boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying affluence. “This is a little different,” he said. “The boots, I fear”--and, pulling down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the size of half a crown. “One does n't sow without reaping some harvest or another. My stomach has shrunk,” he added simply. “To see things one must suffer. '.oyager, c'est plus fort que moi'.” Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the human animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos, a suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow. “I have eaten my illusions,” said the young foreigner, smoking a cigarette. “When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened. '.avoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur'. It 's not always the intellectuals who succeed.” “When you get a job,” said Shelton, “you throw it away, I suppose.” “You accuse me of restlessness? Shall I explain what I think about that? I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere. 'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a day, and save enough after forty years to drag out the remains of an exhausted existence. That's not in my character.” This ingenious paraphrase of the words “I soon get tired of things” he pronounced with an air of letting Shelton into a precious secret. “Yes; it must be hard,” agreed the latter. Ferrand shrugged his shoulders. “It's not all butter,” he replied; “one is obliged to do things that are not too delicate. There's nothing I pride myself on but frankness.” Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could stand in a judicious way. “Yes, yes,” he seemed to say, “you'd like me to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality, no prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel yourself on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another, without any barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca c'est un peu trop fort'. You're as good an imitation as I 've come across in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and I 'm grateful to you, but to tell you everything, as it passes through my mind would damage my prospects. You can hardly expect that.”