He
sat down to his desk and attacked his work, but "copy" would not
come. The sporting editor and his inane jokes harassed him beyond
expression. Just the sight of the clipping editor's back was an
irritation. The office boy was a mere incentive to profanity.
There was no spring in Condy that morning, no elasticity, none of
his natural buoyancy. As the day wore on, his ennui increased;
his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had lost its
charm. He ordered a cocktail in the wine-room, and put it aside
with a wry face.
The afternoon was one long tedium. At every hour he flung his
pencil down, utterly unable to formulate the next sentence of his
article, and, his hands in his pockets, gazed gloomily out of the
window over the wilderness of roofs--grimy, dirty, ugly roofs that
spread out below. He craved diversion, amusement, excitement.
Something there was that he wanted with all his heart and soul;
yet he was quite unable to say what it was. Something was gone
from him to-day that he had possessed yesterday, and he knew he
would not regain it on the morrow, nor the next day, nor the day
after that. What was it? He could not say. For half an hour he
imagined he was going to be sick. His mother was not to be at
home that evening, and Condy dined at his club in the hopes of
finding some one with whom he could go to the theatre later on in
the evening. Sargeant joined him over his coffee and cigarette,
but declined to go with him to the theatre.
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