He seemed half inclined to hurry on, changed his mind and stopped.
I shook hands with him, invited him to drink with me, and we turned into one of the numerous bars which are so surely ousting the newspaper offices from that neighborhood. In the bright light of the electric lamps I saw him more clearly, and I was surprised at the change in his air and dress. He had been a young man of a rounded, sleek and contented face, with an excellent opinion, hardly so well founded as it might have been, of his looks, deportment and intelligence. His taste in dress had been for the florid, and had found expression in boldly checkered tweeds and ornate cravats sustained by large jewelled pins—even Oxford had been unable to thin his massive gold Albert. Now on his gaunt and haggard face was the hunted air of a man at loggerheads with Fortune; his top-hat was brown with age and weather, and napless round the edge of the crown; his morning coat was green about the seams, and in the bitter cold he wore no overcoat.
He chose to drink port, and when it came he asked, with a timidity in strong contrast with the old buoyant self-confidence I remembered in him, if he might have a biscuit with it, lest, drinking on an empty stomach, the wine should get into his head. The waiter brought him four biscuits
