I crushed the letter in my hand, and sat staring at it, my pigsty in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact that, even in a best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything. I remember, as I sat there, a man, a club acquaintance, a bore from whom I had fled many a time, came and settled down beside me and began to talk. He was a small man, but he possessed a voice to which one had to listen. He talked and talked and talked. How I loathed him, as I sat trying to think through his stream of words. I see now that he saved me. He forced me out of myself. But at the time he oppressed me. I was raw and bleeding. I was struggling to grasp the incredible. I had taken Audrey's unalterable affection for granted. She was the natural complement to my scheme of comfort. I wanted her; I had chosen and was satisfied with her, therefore all was well. And now I had to adjust my mind to the impossible fact that I had lost her. Her letter was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little, but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons--and something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved her as I had not dreamed myself capable of loving. And all the while this man talked and talked. I have a theory that speech, persevered in, is more efficacious in times of trouble than silent sympathy. Up to a certain point it maddens almost beyond endurance; but, that point past, it soothes. At least, it was so in my case. Gradually I found myself hating him less. Soon I began to listen, then to answer. Before I left the club that night, the first mad frenzy, in which I could have been capable of anything, had gone from me, and I walked home, feeling curiously weak and helpless, but calm, to begin the new life. Three years passed before I met Cynthia. I spent those years wandering in many countries. At last, as one is apt to do, I drifted back to London, and settled down again to a life which, superficially, was much the same as the one I had led in the days before I knew Audrey. My old circle in London had been wide, and I found it easy to pick up dropped threads. I made new friends, among them Cynthia Drassilis. I liked Cynthia, and I was sorry for her. I think that, about that time I met her, I was sorry for most people. The shock of Audrey's departure had had that effect upon me. It is always the bad nigger who gets religion most strongly at the camp-meeting, and in my case 'getting religion' had taken the form of suppression of self. I never have been able to do things by halves, or even with a decent moderation. As an egoist I had been thorough in my egoism; and now, fate having bludgeoned that vice out of me, I found myself possessed of an almost morbid sympathy with the troubles of other people.