As he went down a carpeted passage he saw himself in the long mirror that lined it. He looked quite himself, well-dressed, prosperous, his face under full control and just like any other smart man about town.
At this hour, there were not many people in the place. It would become crowded and noisy later on.
The white and green tiles of the walls gleamed softly in the shaded lights, electric fans and a huge block of ice upon a pedestal kept the air cool. There were palms which refreshed the eye and upon the porphyry counter at which he was served there was a mass of mauve hydrangea in a copper bowl.
He drank a whiskey and soda very quickly--that was to remove the marked physical exhaustion which had begun to creep over him--ordered another and lit a cigarette.
His nerves responded with magical quickness to the spirit. All day long he had been feeding them with the accustomed poison. The strain of the last half hour had used up more vitality than he had been aware.
For the second time that night--a night so infinitely more eventful than he knew--he became master of himself, calm, happy, even, in the sense of power returned, and complete correspondence with his environment.
The barmaid who served him was--like most of these Slaves of the Still in this part of London--an extremely handsome girl. Her face was painted--all these girls paint their faces--but it was done merely to conceal the pallor and ravages wrought upon it by a hard and feverish life. Lothian felt an immense pity for her, symbolic as she was of all the others, and the few remarks he made were uttered with an instinctive deference and courtesy.
He had been married seven years before this time, and had at once retired into the country with his wife where, by slow degrees, he had felt his way to the work which had at last made him celebrated. But in the past he had known the under side of London well and had chosen it deliberately as his _milieu_.
It had in no way been forced upon him. Struggling journalist and author as he was, good houses had been open to him, for he was a member of a well-known family and had made many friends at Oxford.
But the other life was so much easier! If its pleasures were coarse, they were hot and strong! For years, as many a poet has done before him, he lived a bad life, tolerant of vice in himself and others, kind, generous often, but tossed and worn by his passions--rivetting the chains link by link upon his soul--until he had met and married Mary.