n puffing their clouds of smoke into each other's eyes in profound
silence, till the clock struck eight, when the exciseman would get up,
knock the ashes out of his pipe, and with a 'Not much news, to speak
of,' be off to his bed. This they styled, in all seriousness, 'Our
Club.'

"Very good indeed," said Theodore, "and our Cyprian here would have
been a splendid candidate for membership in that club. He never would
have broken the sacred silence by any ill-timed remark. He seems to
have taken a vow of silence, like the monks of La Trappe, for up to
this moment not a syllable has passed his lips."

Cyprian, who had indeed been completely silent up to this point, heaved
a deep sigh, as if awaking from a dream; raised his eyes to the
ceiling, and said, with a quiet smile:

"I don't mind confessing that all this day I have been unable to banish
from my recollection a certain strange adventure which I met with
several years ago; and perhaps when the voices within one are loud, the
lips are not very apt to open for speech. But I have been attending to
all that has been said, and can give a proper account of it all. In the
first place, Theodore was quite right in saying that we had been
childish in fancying that we could begin again just where we left off
twelve years ago, and were sulking with each other because this was
not, and could not be, the case. I maintain that nothing could have so
established us as Philistines incarnate as to have gone ambling along
in our old track. And this reminds me of two savants--but I must tell
this story at full length. Imagine two men--whom I shall call Sebastian
and Ptolemy--imagine to yourselves these two studying Kant's philosophy
as hard as they could at College at K----, and daily carrying on long
discussions as to various points of it. Just at the moment when
Sebastian was going to deliver his most clenching blow, and Ptolemy
pulling himself together to answer it, they were interrupted; and Fate
so arranged matters that they never met again in K----, one going off
in one direction, the other, in another. Nearly twenty years afterwards
Ptolemy saw in the streets of B----, a figure walking, whom he at once
recognised as his friend Sebastian. He rushed after him, slapped him on
the shoulder, and when he looked round, Ptolemy said: 'Then you
maintain that----'

"In short, struck the (argumentative) blow which he had lifted his arm
to deliver twenty years before! Sebastian sprung the