him yesterday you saw me dining. He undertook, as
he called it, to 'nose round' and see if anything could be made of our
questionable but possible show. The matter had never seriously been
taken up. A month later I got a letter from Simmons assuring me that it
seemed a very good show indeed and that he should be greatly surprised
if I were unable to do something. This was the greatest push I had ever
got in my life; I took a deliberate step, for the first time; I sailed
for England. I've been here three days: they've seemed three months.
After keeping me waiting for thirty-six hours my legal adviser makes his
appearance last night and states to me, with his mouth full of mutton,
that I haven't a leg to stand on, that my claim is moonshine, and that
I must do penance and take a ticket for six more days of purgatory
with his presence thrown in. My friend, my friend--shall I say I was
disappointed? I'm already resigned. I didn't really believe I had
any case. I felt in my deeper consciousness that it was the crowning
illusion of a life of illusions. Well, it was a pretty one. Poor legal
adviser!--I forgive him with all my heart. But for him I shouldn't be
sitting in this place, in this air, under these impressions. This is a
world I could have got on with beautifully. There's an immense charm in
its having been kept for the last. After it nothing else would have been
tolerable. I shall now have a month of it, I hope, which won't be long
enough for it to "go back on me. There's one thing!"--and here, pausing,
he laid his hand on mine; I rose and stood before him--"I wish it were
possible you should be with me to the end."

"I promise you to leave you only when you kick me downstairs." But I
suggested my terms. "It must be on condition of your omitting from your
conversation this intolerable flavour of mortality. I know nothing of
'ends.' I'm all for beginnings."

He kept on me his sad weak eyes. Then with a faint smile: "Don't cut
down a man you find hanging. He has had a reason for it. I'm bankrupt."

"Oh health's money!" I said. "Get well, and the rest will take care of
itself. I'm interested in your questionable claim--it's the question
that's the charm; and pretenders, to anything big enough, have always
been, for me, an attractive class. Only their first duty's to be
gallant."

"Their first duty's to understand their own points and to know their own
mind," he returned with hopeless lucidity. "Don't ask me to climb o