Vain Fortune

only on the delivery of the completed manuscript. And the whole of one night, in a room hardly eight feet long, sitting on

air, he thought of the thousands who would come to his aid if they only knew-if they only knew! And soon after he heard life beginning again in the little brick street. He felt that his brain was giving way, that if he did not find change, whatever it was, he

walked next day to the Victoria Docks. He did not know where or how to apply for work, and he tired himself in fruitless endeavour. At last he felt he could strive with fate no longer, and wandered mile after mile, amused and forgetful of his own misery in the spectacle of the river-the rose sky, the lon

ing and nothing, least of all of how he should find money for the morrow. When the day came, and the penny to buy a cup of coffee was wanting, he quite naturally, without giving it a second thought, engaged himself as a labourer, and worked all day carrying sacks of grain out of a

his unfortunate play in the North. Had they destroyed it? The involuntary fear of the writer for his child made him smile. What did it matter? Clearly the first thing to do wou

ay right, what a difference it would have made! He would have been able to do a number of things he had never done, things which he had always desired to do. He had desired above all to travel-to see France and Italy; to linger, to muse in the shadows of the world's past; and after

earning his daily bread otherwise than by doing the work of a navvy. Even that he could not do well, society had softened his muscles and effeminised his constitution. Indeed, he did not know what life fate had willed him for. He seemed to be out of place everywhere. His best chance was to try to obtain a clerkship. The editor of The Cosmopolitan might be able to do that for him; if he

ek's toil in the docks upon them, Hubert made his way round St. Paul's and across H

u?' It was Rose. 'Where ha

got all his own troubles in a sudden interest in this little mite. 'Where have you been hidin

on't m

. He says it never was properly played ... he thinks he'll make a hit in the husband's part, and I daresay he will. But I have been unfortunate again; I wanted the part of the adventu

s he cast you for

r Mrs. Barrington, I should have had just the five minutes in the second act that I have been waiting for so long, and I should have

and then he said, 'Yes, I think you could do just what yo

s the whole thing. But you must go at once to Ford. He was saying only thi

im to-night. You see

here have you been? wha

e dock.... I thought

ooking. Now that he's going to revive your play, he'll let you have some money. You might get a ne

thank

are not o

shall be able to manage. I'

her parasol to the conductor. 'Mind you see Ford to-night,' she cried; and a m