The high road to the village of Garsworth was wide, deeply rutted, and somewhat grass-grown. A man leaned over a broken fence, gazing at the setting sun and the desolate landscape. The scene was eerie, with the red sunset casting a sinister glow over the fen-lands and the river Gar. The man had a curious face, long and narrow, with piercing dark eyes and a hawk-like nose. His appearance was that of a Bohemian, with a reckless and insolent air about him. Basil Beaumont, forty-five years old, was a man who lived a solitary life, never making friends due to his selfish and reckless nature. He was always seen smoking cigarettes, dismissing concerns about his nerves. Smoking was his one indulgence, as he believed that men like him couldn't afford to have nerves.He had a number of other vices, however, as many young men found to their cost. True, he himself did not drink, but he led others to do so, nor did he covet his neighbour's wife, yet he was by no means averse to playing the part of Sir Pandarus of Troy, provided it was to his own interest to do so. Moreover, he gambled. It was in this terrible passion--rarely, if ever conquered--that he found his greatest delight. The green cloth-covered table, the painted hieroglyphics of the cards, the hopes, the fears, the gains, the losses, were all to him but a representation of his daily life on a small scale. He gambled with men as he gambled with cards, meeting varied fortunes in both, and risking his luck as recklessly in the game of Life as in the game of baccarat. He was a scamp, a scoundrel, a blackleg of the deepest dye, bankrupt in pocket and in illusions; yet he always kept within the limits of the law, and, moreover, sinned in an eminently gentlemanly manner, which robbed the sordid, feverish life he was leading of its most repulsive features.

Why this artificial man, who lived only in the glare of the gas-lamps, and, owl-like, shunned the searching light of the day, had come to such an out-of-the-way village as Garsworth was a puzzle, but nevertheless a puzzle easy of solution. His object was two-fold. In the first place, he had left London to escape the demands of persistent creditors, and in the second, being a native of the dull little hamlet, he had returned to visit the scenes of his youth not seen by him for three-and-twenty years. It was not a sentimental longing--no, Mr. Beaumont and sentiment had long since parted company; but Garsworth was a dead and alive place where no one would think of looking for him, so he could stay there in safety until he saw a chance of arranging his pecuniary affairs and leaving the Arcadia he detested for the London he loved.

An artist by profession, 

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