“You speak as though that were unusual,” Douglas laughed, “but I was just thinking that every one here seems to be in the same state.  Some one once told me that London was a city of sadness.  Who could watch the people here and say so?”

The newcomer screwed in his eyeglass and looked deliberately round the room.

“Well,” he said, “this is a resort of the poor, and the poor are seldom sad.  It is the unfortunate West-Enders who carry the burdens of wealth and the obligation of position, who have earned for us the reproach of dulness.  Here we are on the threshold of Bohemia.  Long life and health to it.”

He drank a glass of Chianti with the air of a connoisseur tasting some rare vintage.

Douglas laughed softly.

“If the people here are poor,” he said, “what about me?  I pawned my watch because I had had nothing to eat since yesterday.”

His new friend sighed and stuck his fork into an olive.

“What affluence,” he sighed, meditatively.  “I have not possessed a watch for a year, and I’ve only ninepence in my pocket.  They give me tick here.  Foolish Spargetti.  Long may their confidence last!”

A companion in impecuniosity.  Douglas looked at his neat clothes and the flower in his buttonhole, and wondered.

“But you have the means of making money if you care to.”

“Have I?” The eyeglass was carefully removed, the small wizened face assumed a lugubrious aspect.  “My friend,” he said, “in a measure it is true—­but such a small measure.  A cold-blooded and unappreciative editor apprises my services at the miserable sum of three pounds a week.  I have heard of people who have lived upon that sum, but I must confess that I never met one.”

“You are a writer, then?” Douglas exclaimed, eagerly.

“I am a sort of hack upon the staff of the Ibex.  They set me down in a corner of the office and throw me scraps of work, as you would bones to a dog.  It is not dignified, but one must eat and drink—­not to mention smoking.  Permit me, by-the-bye, to offer you a cigarette, and to recommend the coffee.  I taught Spargetti how to make it myself.”

Douglas was listening with flushed cheeks.  The Ibex!  What a coincidence!

“You are really on the staff of the Ibex?” he exclaimed.

The other nodded.

“I hold exactly the position,” he said, “that I have described to you.  My own impression is, that without me the Ibex would not exist for a month.  That is where the editor and I differ, unfortunately.”

“It seems so odd,” Douglas said.  “Some time ago I sent a story to the Ibex, and it was accepted.  I have been looking for it to appear every week.”

The shrewd little eyes twinkled into his.

“What was the title?”

“‘No Man’s Land.’  Douglas Jesson was the name.”

The newcomer filled Douglas’s glass with Chianti from his own modest flask.