“I've SAID good night,” he cried, “I've SAID good night,” and so went on to his flat. The unquenchable demand, the wearisome insatiability of sex! When everything else has gone, then it shows itself bare in the bleak small hours. And at first it had seemed so light a matter! He went to bed, feeling dog-tired, he went to bed at an hour and with a finished completeness that Merkle would have regarded as entirely becoming in a young gentleman of his position. And a little past three o'clock in the morning he awoke to a mood of indescribable desolation. He awoke with a start to an agony of remorse and self-reproach. 9 For a time he lay quite still staring at the darkness, then he groaned and turned over. Then, suddenly, like one who fancies he hears a strange noise, he sat up in bed and listened. “Oh, God!” he said at last. And then: “Oh! The DIRTINESS of life! The dirty muddle of life! “What are we doing with life? What are we all doing with life? “It isn't only this poor Milly business. This only brings it to a head. Of course she wants money....” His thoughts came on again. “But the ugliness! “Why did I begin it?” He put his hands upon his knees and pressed his eyes against the backs of his hands and so remained very still, a blankness beneath his own question. After a long interval his mind moved again. And now it was as if he looked upon his whole existence, he seemed to see in a large, clear, cold comprehensiveness, all the wasted days, the fruitless activities, the futilities, the perpetual postponements that had followed his coming to London. He saw it all as a joyless indulgence, as a confusion of playthings and undisciplined desires, as a succession of days that began amiably and weakly, that became steadily more crowded with ignoble and trivial occupations, that had sunken now to indignity and uncleanness. He was overwhelmed by that persuasion, which only freshly soiled youth can feel in its extreme intensity, that life was slipping away from him, that the sands were running out, that in a little while his existence would be irretrievably lost. By some trick of the imagination he saw life as an interminable Bond Street, lit up by night lamps, desolate, full of rubbish, full of the very best rubbish, trappings, temptations, and down it all he drove, as the damned drive, wearily, inexplicably. WHAT ARE WE UP TO WITH LIFE! WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF LIFE! But hadn't he intended to make something tremendous of life? Hadn't he come to London trailing a glory?...