“Perhaps,” said Mr. Cardan judicially. “At any rate there are more complaints about this curse than about the other. Those that have not complain about their own fate. Those that have do not, it is only those in contact with them—and since the havers are few these too are few—who complain of the curse of having. In my time I have belonged to both categories. Once I had; and I can see that to my fellow men I must then have been intolerable. Now”—Mr. Cardan drew a deep breath and blew it out between trumpeting lips, to indicate the way in which the money had gone—“now I have not. The curse of insolence and avarice has been removed from me. But what low shifts, what abjections this not-having has, by compensation, reduced me to! Swindling peasants out of their artistic property, for example!” “Ah, but that’s not so bad,” cried Mr. Elver excitedly, “as what I’ve had to do. That’s nothing at all. You’ve never been an advertisement canvasser.” “No,” Mr. Cardan admitted, “I’ve never been an advertisement canvasser.” “Then you can’t know what the curse of not-having really is. You can’t have an idea. You’ve no right to talk about the curse.” Mr. Elver’s harsh, unsteady voice rose and fell excitedly as he talked. “No right,” he repeated. “Perhaps I haven’t,” said Mr. Cardan mollifyingly. He took the opportunity to pour out some more wine for his host. Nobody has a right, he reflected, to be more miserable than we are. Each one of us is the most unhappily circumstanced creature in the world. Hence it’s enormously to our credit that we bear up and get on as well as we do. “Look here,” Mr. Elver went on confidentially, and he tried to look Mr. Cardan squarely in the face as he spoke; but the effort was too great and he had to avert his eyes; “look here, let me tell you.” He leaned forward eagerly and slapped the table in front of where Mr. Cardan was sitting to emphasise what he was saying and to call his guest’s attention to it. “My father was a country parson,” he began, talking rapidly and excitedly. “We were very poor—horribly. Not that he minded much: he used to read Dante all the time. That annoyed my mother—I don’t know why. You know the smell of very plain cooking? Steamed puddings—the very thought of them makes me sick now.” He shuddered. “There were four of us then. But my brother was killed in the war and my elder sister died of influenza. So now there’s only me and the one you saw to-night.” He tapped his forehead. “She never grew up, but got stuck somehow. A moron.” He laughed compassionlessly. “Though I don’t know why I need tell you that. For it’s obvious enough, isn’t it?” Mr. Cardan said nothing. His host flinched away from his half-winking, half-supercilious gaze, and fortifying himself with another gulp of wine, which Mr. Cardan a moment later unobtrusively made good from the flask, went on: