Instinctively he turned his steps westwards.
This might well be the last night on which he would care to show himself in his accustomed haunts, the last night on which he could mix with his fellows freely, and without that terrible sense of consciousness which follows upon disaster.

Already there was little enough left of it.

It was too late to change and go to his club.
The places of amusement were already closed.

To-morrow night, both club and theatres would lie outside his world.

He walked slowly, yet he had scarcely taken, in fact, a dozen steps when, with a purely mechanical impulse, he paused by a stone-flagged entry to light a cigarette.