difficulties, and what made the extravagance to me, at any rate, so monotonously uninteresting, as your persistent grasp on my life grew stronger and stronger, was that the money was spent on little more than the pleasures of eating, drinking and the like.  Now and then it is a joy to have one’s table red with wine and roses, but you outstripped all taste and temperance.  You demanded without grace and received without thanks.  You grew to think that you had a sort of right to live at my expense, and in a profuse luxury to which you had never been accustomed, and which, for that reason, made your appetites all the more keen, and at the end, if you lost money gambling in some Algiers Casino, you simply telegraphed next morning to me in London to lodge the amount of your losses to your account at your bank, and gave the matter no further thought of any kind.

When I tell you that between the autumn of 1892 and the date of my imprisonment, I spent with you and on you, more than L5,000 in actual money, irrespective of the bills I incurred, you will have some idea of the sort of life on which you insisted.  Do you think I exaggerate?  My ordinary expenses with you for an ordinary day in London—­for luncheon, dinner, supper, amusements, hansoms, and the rest of it—­ranged from L12 to L20, and the week’s expenses were naturally in proportion and ranged from L80 to L130.  For our three months at Goring my expenses (rent, of course, included) were L1,340.  Step by step with the Bankruptcy Receiver I had to go over every item of my life.  It was horrible.  “Plain living and high thinking,” was, of course, an ideal you could not at that time have appreciated, but such an extravagance was a disgrace to both of us.  One of the most delightful dinners I remember ever having had is one Robbie and I had together in a little Soho Cafe, which cost about as many shillings as my dinners to you used to cost pounds.  Out of my dinner with Robbie came the first and best of all my dialogues.  Idea, title, treatment, mode, everything was struck out at a 3 franc 50c. table d’hote.  Out of the reckless dinners with you nothing remains but the memory that too much was eaten and too much was drunk.  And my yielding to your demands was bad for you.  You know that now.  It made you grasping often:  at times not a little unscrupulous:  ungracious always.  There was, on far too many occasions, too little joy or privilege in being your host.  You forgot—­I will not say the formal courtesy of thanks, for formal courtesies will strain a close friendship—­but simply the grace of sweet companionship, the charm of pleasant conversation, and all those gentle humanities that make life lovely, and are an accompaniment to life as music might be, keeping things in tune and filling with melody the harsh or silent places.  And though it may seem strange to you that one in the terrible position in which I am situated, should find a difference between one disgrace and another, still I frankly admit that the folly of throwing away all this money on you, and letting you squander my fortune to your own hurt as well as to mine, gives to me and in my eyes a note of common profligacy to my bankruptcy that makes me doubly ashamed of it.  I was made for other things.