a.

"So far as I know, they saw each other no more. He walked on the deck
so much now that his friend went back to London, saying he could get
no sleep. Sometimes we took long walks alone; often we sat for hours
looking at the river, for on those occasions he would take me out of the
leather case and put me on his knee. One day his friend came back and
told him that he would soon get over it, he himself having once had
a similar experience; but my master said no one had ever loved as he
loved, and muttered 'Vixi, vixi' to himself till the other told him not
to be a fool, but to come to the hotel and have something to eat. Over
this they quarrelled, my master hinting that he would eat no more; but
he ate heartily after his friend was gone.

"After a time we left the house-boat, and were in chambers in a great
inn. I was still in his pocket, and heard many conversations between him
and people who came to see him, and he would tell them that he loathed
the society of women. When they told him, as one or two did, that they
were in love, he always said that he had gone through that stage ages
ago. Still, at nights he would take me out of my case, when he was
alone, and look at me; after which he walked up and down the room in
an agitated manner and cried 'Vixi.'

"By and by he left me in a coat that he was no longer wearing. Before
this he had always put me into whatever coat he had on. I lay neglected,
I think, for a month, until one day he felt the pockets of the coat for
something else, and pulled me out. I don't think he remembered what was
in the leather case at first; but as he looked at me his face filled
with sentiment, and next day he took me with him to Cookham. The winter
was come, and it was a cold day. There were no boats on the river. He
walked up the bank to the garden where was the house in which she had
lived; but the place was now deserted. On the garden gate he sat down,
taking me from his pocket; and here, I think, he meant to recall the
days that were dead. But a cold, piercing wind was blowing, and many
times he looked at his watch, putting it to his ear as if he thought it
had stopped. After a little he took to flinging stones into the water,
for something to do; and then he went to the hotel and stayed there
till he got a train back to London. We were home many hours before he
meant to be back, and that night he went to a theatre.

"That was my last day in the leather case. He keeps something else