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door the man next to him would attempt a conversation;
but Philip had the country boy’s suspicion of strangers and
answered in such a way as to prevent any further acquain-
tance. After the play was over, obliged to keep to himself all
he thought about it, he hurried across the bridge to Water-
loo. When he got back to his rooms, in which for economy
no fire had been lit, his heart sank. It was horribly cheerless.
He began to loathe his lodgings and the long solitary eve-
nings he spent in them. Sometimes he felt so lonely that he
could not read, and then he sat looking into the fire hour
after hour in bitter wretchedness.
He had spent three months in London now, and except
for that one Sunday at Hampstead had never talked to any-
one but his fellow-clerks. One evening Watson asked him
to dinner at a restaurant and they went to a music-hall to-
gether; but he felt shy and uncomfortable. Watson talked
all the time of things he did not care about, and while he
looked upon Watson as a Philistine he could not help ad-
miring him. He was angry because Watson obviously set
no store on his culture, and with his way of taking himself
at the estimate at which he saw others held him he began to
despise the acquirements which till then had seemed to him
not unimportant. He felt for the first time the humiliation
of poverty. His uncle sent him fourteen pounds a month
and he had had to buy a good many clothes. His evening
suit cost him five guineas. He had not dared tell Watson
that it was bought in the Strand. Watson said there was only
one tailor in London.
‘I suppose you don’t dance,’ said Watson, one day, with a

0 Of Human Bondage