As long as the light continues | Agatha Christie

This story deals with the life of John Seagrave, that unsatisfactory life. It also deals with his lost love, his dreams, and his death, and although he found in dreams and death what he did not find in love and life, perhaps we could say he lived a happy life. Who knows? John Seagrave descends from a family whose living conditions worsened over the past century; his family members had been large landowners since the time of Queen Elizabeth, but they had sold all their possessions. They believed wholeheartedly that one of the family members must pursue a profession to earn money. And luck was on their side! John was chosen to be the son who must do that. It was not logical for John — that man with a thin mouth and dark, narrow blue eyes that resembled dwarf eyes — to be the suitable person to be sacrificed for the sake of money. He had to bid farewell to those things he loved: the smell of the earth, the taste of saltwater on his lips, and that clear sky stretching above him. John worked as a junior employee in a major trading company, and he was not over eighteen years old. After seven years, John was still an employee — perhaps no longer a beginner — but his job rank had not changed either. The idea of "making progress in life" had no place in John's vocabulary. He lived the life of employees; where discipline and diligence at work were all there was.