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“Why friendless? Tell me what it is that makes you so downhearted?” Her tones were well calculated to reassure him.

“I am suffering from the inevitable misery which, as a ghost, follows the erring,” he said, and his voice was hard.

“Tell me all about it, Mr. Frost, that I may be in sympathy with you.”

“Then I will tell you all,” raising a face that looked worn and worried. “There is nothing of sentiment in my misfortune; as rascally old Panurge used to put it, ‘I am troubled with a disease known as a plentiful lack of money.’”

“Why, Mr. Frost, I thought you were rich; the world takes it that way.”

“I did possess a fair competency until two weeks ago, but an unfortunate investment in Reading swept it away like thistledown in the wind. The friends to whom I could apply for aid are in the same boat. For one of them, I, very like the fool Antonio, have gone security for a thousand dollars. To-morrow that must be paid else I lose my pound of flesh, which, taken literally, means my studio, pictures, and, worst of all, my reputation.”