Wrinkles of stagnation had began to creep into forehead and cheeks--wrinkles that no amount of gymnasium, of club life, of careful shaving, of strict hygiene could banish.
Through the west windows the slowly changing hues of gray, of mulberry, and dull rose-pink blurred in the sky, cast softened lights upon those wrinkles, but could not hide them.

They revealed sad emptiness of purpose.

This man was tired unto death, if ever man were tired.
He yawned, sighed deeply, stretched out his hand and took up a bit of a model mechanism from the table, where it had lain with other fragments of apparatus.

For a moment he peered at it; then he tossed it back again, and yawned a second time.
"Business!" he growled.

"'Swapped my reputation for a song,' eh?
Where's my commission, now ?" He got up, clasped his hands behind him, and walked a few times up and down the heavy rug, his footfalls silent.
"The business could have gone on without me!" he added, bitterly.
"And, after all, what's any business, compared to _life_ ?" He yawned again, stretched up his arms, groaned and laughed with mockery: "A little more money, maybe, when I don't know what to do with what I've got already! A few more figures on a checkbook--and the heart dying in me!" Then he relapsed into silence.