‘Now then, move away from the bar when you’ve been served,’ shouted the landlord, leaning across the bar in his bullying way. ‘I haven’t been served! I want a gin and a glass of stout!’ Charles shrieked with sudden violence. A silence fell, and everyone turned to look at him for an instant; then, indifferent, they turned back to their own conversations. In this way they succeeded in conveying, once more, the all-important fact—that he was imprisoned in his class, not one of them, condemned to solitary confinement if once he strayed from his own kind. And yet he hated his own kind: Robert Tharkles, George Hutchins, Lockwood. He gulped down the gin and immediately raised the stout to his lips. His long wait at the bar had sobered him up, and it was important to mix his drinks quickly if he wanted release.

It was not long in coming. As the long, slow gulps of stout followed the quick dash of gin into his stomach, his previous drinks seemed to wake from their dormancy. One by one, the familiar signs of approaching intoxication began to assert them­selves. His tongue felt slightly numb; pressed against his lower front teeth, it seemed to be covered with a sheath of flannel. The bar, as he stared down its shiny length, began to rise and fall gently. High in the ceiling, the three electric lights which glared down through the clouds of smoke began to circle one another in a solemn dance.

‘Got a light, mate?’ came a croak from beside him. Before answering Charles raised his glass and, without hurry, poured the last third of the stout down his throat. As it foamed and splashed into the dancing ocean that awaited it, his sense of liberation became complete. When sober he would have spun round, anxious to be of service, to ingratiate himself; he would have dived for his matches, probably spilling his drink as he did so. Now, he was calm, insolent, able to live on the same level as the majority of his fellows.