Wherever he was he liked to be given, tacitly, the first place--or a place among the first.

Among the musical people he frequented, he found himself on a callow kind of equality with everybody, even the stars and aristocrats, at one moment, and a backstairs outsider the next.

It was all just as the moment demanded.
There was a certain excitement in slithering up and down the social scale, one minute chatting in a personal tete-a-tete with the most famous, or notorious, of the society beauties: and the next walking in the rain, with his flute in a bag, to his grubby lodging in Bloomsbury.
Only the excitement roused all the savage sarcasm that lay at the bottom of his soul, and which burned there like an unhealthy bile.
Therefore he determined to clear out--to disappear.

He had a letter from Lilly, from Novara.

Lilly was drifting about.