A successful play would have given him all these
things, and now his dream must remain for ever unrealised by him. He had
sunk out of sight and hearing of such life.
Rose was another; she might sink as he had sunk; she might never find the
opportunity of realising her desire. How well she would have played that
part! He knew what was in her. And now! What did his failure to write that
play condemn him to? Heaven only knows, he did not wish to think. Strange,
was it not strange?... A man of genius--many believed him a genius--and yet
he was incapable of 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 could not, far better it would be
to leave a world in which he was _out of place_, and through no fault of
his own--that was the hard part of it. Hard part! Nonsense! What does Fate
know of our little rights and wrongs--or care? Her intentions are
inscrutable; she watches us come and go, and gives no sign.
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