al excursion by
his old friend, as if it were altogether new to him. He laughed aloud,
and, putting a consoling hand on his friend's shoulder as he rose, he
told us he must leave us for a few minutes, for he had business. "Look
more cheerful before I get back, Doctor."

The doctor chuckled, and stretched across to give his gloves a more
satisfactory position on his hat. "I don't understand what it can be
that attracts people to such a place. Young men, maybe yourself even,
wish to go there. Isn't that so? Yes. I've met such men in such
places. Then they did not give me the impression that they were
satisfied with their romance. Impossible, of course. Romance is never
in the place unless we put it there, and who would put even a sentimental
dream into such a hole as Tabacol? Tropical squalor. Broken people!
I've never seen romance in such a place, and don't expect to. . . ."

Several cabs, on their way to a ship outward bound, made an increasing
noise in the night, rattled by on the cobbles outside, their occupants
roaring a sentimental chorus, and drowned what the doctor was saying.

". . . folly. Worse than folly." He was holding his gloves now, and was
lightly flicking the edge of the table with them in place of verbal
emphasis. He suddenly regarded me again as if he strongly suspected me
of being his antipathy. "Who but a fool would take a woman to such a
country as that? Any romantic sentimentalist, I suppose. I forget the
name of the ship. There was, you might say, hardly sufficient room to
paint a name on her. She was no more than a tug. It was a miracle she
survived to get there at all, for she had crossed from England. Crossed
the Western ocean in such a craft, and brought a woman with him. Did
ever you hear of such folly?"

Now I was certain of our whereabouts, and felt a weak inclination to show
an elder that I, too, knew something about it; but when I leaned forward
eagerly and was about to speak, the doctor screwed in that devastating
monocle, and I felt I was only a curious example of the sort of thing he
especially disliked. For a minute, in which I wondered if I had quite
stopped his guarded flow, he said no more. Then he addressed his
eyeglass to a panel of the partition, and flicked his gloves at that.

"I had noticed for some days that little craft lying near us, but gave
her no attention. I had sixteen men to attend to with complexions like
lemons, and one died. There wa