Christmas came and went. The days lengthened microscopically, and became colder and wetter. Apart from this, nothing altered. Charles began to wonder what had happened to his life. Regu­larity seemed to have claimed it.

‘What you need is a change,’ said Froulish one evening, sitting back and looking at him attentively for the first time for weeks. ‘Your life’s too narrow, that’s your trouble.’

He himself had not been out of the loft for more than a couple of hours at a time since he first moved into it, and neither given, nor received, hospitality. But then he was a dedicated man. He did not need a change.

‘Too narrow,’ he repeated, dragging his fingers through his matted hair.

Charles was impressed. If the self-absorbed monomaniac had noticed a difference in him, and been moved to comment and advice, it must be serious indeed. He determined to irrigate his life a little. The dismal winter months must be made to pass more cheerfully.

So the next evening he set himself the task of stretching the resources of his limited wardrobe as far as they would go in the direction of everyday respectability. The dark suit he had been wearing when he first entered his new life was, fortunately, not too worn; he had soon given up wearing it for work. And he had a shirt and tie that were scarcely worn at all. His shoes were old and cracked, but they would pass muster, and he had nothing else except the Wellingtons he wore on his daily round. Dressed once more in the uniform of the class he had renounced, he surveyed himself critically in Betty’s looking-glass. Apart from the fact that his frame had broadened, giving him something of the characteristic heavy-shouldered carriage of the manual worker, he still looked much the same. A cheap haircut had left him with an ugly match-stick-length crop, but that was the only class badge he was wearing, and it was not a conspicuous one.

Thus equipped for a raid into enemy territory, he pushed through the swing doors of the town’s Grand Hotel at dinner­time, determined to live at the rate of a thousand a year for the next few hours. Although he had, on occasion, cleaned the hotel’s windows, no one recognized him; nor did he feel any fear that they would; and in any case they could not turn him out. Settling himself near the imitation log fire in the Oak Lounge, he sipped at a glass of good sherry and broke into a packet of expensive cigarettes. This was enjoyment.