It was the chief recreation of this little society.
Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee.

He took an omnibus, and getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat in his hand.

He was thinking of Helen Bellew.

It had become a habit with him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex--a habit in which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not part.
And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and thought: 'What a fine-looking man!' But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics' Club, smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little unpleasant to George.
Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through his nerves and a habit of blood to the head.

Extravagance, she said, I cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant enough.