When I did next meet him it was by accident.
I had left the Whitehall Rooms after a public dinner, and, glad of the cool night air, was strolling home by the Embankment.
A man, slouching along under the trees, paused as I overtook him.
"You couldn't oblige me with a light, could you, guv'nor?" he said. The voice sounded strange, coming from the figure that it did.
I struck a match, and held it out to him, shaded by my hands.
As the faint light illumined his face, I started back, and let the match fall:--
"Harry!"
He answered with a short dry laugh.
"I didn't know it was you," he said, "or I shouldn't have stopped you."
"How has it come to this, old fellow?" I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder.
His coat was unpleasantly greasy, and I drew my hand away again as quickly as I could, and tried to wipe it covertly upon my handkerchief.
"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional to be worth telling.
Some of us go up, you know.
Some of us go down.
You're doing pretty well, I hear."
"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and am trying to stick there.
But it is of you I want to talk.
Can't I do anything for you?"
We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment.
He thrust his face forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.
"Do I look like a man you could do anything for?" he said.
We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that might seize hold of him.
"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm comfortable enough.
We take life easily down here where I am.
We've no disappointments."
"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily.
"You had talent.
You would have won with ordinary perseverance."
"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference.
"I suppose I hadn't the grit.
I think if somebody had believed in me it might have helped me.
But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself.
And when a man loses that, he's like a balloon with the gas let out."
I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment.
"Nobody believed in you!" I repeated.
"Why, _I_ always believed in you, you know that I--"
Then I paused, remembering our "candid criticism" of one another.
"Did you?" he replied quietly,
"I never heard you say so.
Good-night."
In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark turnings thereabouts.
I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel stands, I had lost all trace of him.
A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made inquiries.
"What sort of a gent was he, sir?" questioned the man.
"A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed--might be mistaken for a tramp."
"Ah, there's a good many of that sort living in this town," replied the man.
"I'm afraid you'll have some difficulty in finding him."
Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I should never listen for their drawing near again.
I wondered as I walked on--I have wondered before and since--whether Art, even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted in her behalf--whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.
Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferry-boat.