CHAPTER III THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN The next day the search for work had to be begun, and David felt himself squarely against the beginning of his new career as an ex-convict. He saw this career, not as a part to be abandoned when it wearied him, like a rôle assumed for a season by a sociological investigator, but as the part he must play, must _live_, to the end of his days. His immediate struggle, his whole future, would not be one whit other than if he were in truth the thief the world had branded him. Writing for the magazines was not to be thought of, for he needed quick, certain money. He was friendless; he had no profession; he had no trade; he had never held a position; he had no experience of a commercial value. All in all his equipment for facing the world, barring his education, was identical with the equipment of the average discharged convict. David did not look forward into this career with resignation. There was nothing of the willing martyr in him. The life he must follow was not going to be easy; it would demand his all of courage and endurance. He longed to stand before the world a clean man, and the longing was at times a fierce rebellion. He had bought a great good, but he was paying therefor a bitter price, and every day of his life he must pay the price anew. Yet he faced the future with determination, if not with happiness. He believed that earnest work and earnest living would regain the world's respect--would slowly force the world to yield him place. He tried to forbid himself thinking of Helen Chambers as having the slightest part in his future. She was a thousand times farther removed than four years before, when his name had been fair, and then the space of the universe had stretched between them. And yet the desire some day to appear well in her eyes was after all the strongest motive, stronger even than the instinct of self-preservation, that urged him upon the long, uphill struggle. David had determined first to seek work on a newspaper. Some of the things he had written in that far-away time beyond the prison, came back to him. They were not bad--they were really good! If he could get on one of the papers, and could manage to hold his place for a few months without his story being learned, perhaps by then he would have so proved his worth that he would be retained despite his prison record. He would do his best! Who knew?--life might have a very endurable place for him somewhere in the years ahead. He grew almost excited as he gazed at the dimly-seen success.