to
Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington
is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to
give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to
my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be hanged doesn't seek
interviews with the judge in order to learn how the rope is getting on.
I conveyed to him politely, although he is an old friend, that I desired
to forget his well-fed existence. In his chatty way he requested me not
to be an ass, and proceeded to put to me the usual silly questions.

Remembering the result of my last visit, I made him happy by answering
them gloomily; whereupon he seized his opportunity and ordered me out
of England for the winter. I must go to a warm climate--Egypt, South
Africa, Madeira--I could take my choice. I flatly refused to obey. I had
my duties in London. He was so unsympathetic as to damn my duties. My
duty was to live as long as possible, and my wintering in London would
probably curtail my short life by two months. Then I turned on him
and explained the charitable disingenuousness of my replies to
his questions. He refused to believe me, and we parted with mutual
recriminations. I sent him next day, however, a brace of pheasants, a
present from Farfax Glenn. After all, he is one of God's creatures.

The next time I called on Lola Brandt I went with the fixed
determination to make some progress in my mission. I vowed that I would
not be seduced by trumpery conversation about Yokohama or allow my mind
to be distracted by absurd adventures among cats. I would clothe myself
in the armour of eumoiriety, and, with the sword of duty in my hand,
would go forth to battle with the enchantress. All said and done, what
was she but a bold-faced, strapping woman without an idea in her head
save the enslavement of an impressionable boy several years her junior?
It was preposterous that I, Simon de Gex, who had beguiled and fooled an
electorate of thirty thousand hard-headed men into choosing me for their
representative in Parliament, should not be a match for Lola Brandt.
As for her complicated feminine personality, her intuitiveness, her
magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical
fancy had assigned to her, they had no existence in reality. She was
the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a
sentimental lunatic.

In this truly admirable frame of mind I entered