s, their commonplace details,
their lack of artistic feeling and restraint.

"The late Arthur Constant came to live nearly opposite me. I cultivated
his acquaintance--he was a lovable young fellow, an excellent subject
for experiment. I do not know when I have ever taken to a man more. From
the moment I first set eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy
between us. We were drawn to each other. I felt instinctively he would
be the man. I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically of the
Brotherhood of Man--I, who knew the brotherhood of man was to the ape,
the serpent, and the tiger--and he seemed to find a pleasure in stealing
a moment's chat with me from his engrossing self-appointed duties. It is
a pity humanity should have been robbed of so valuable a life. But it
had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of December 3d he came to
me. Naturally I said nothing about this visit at the inquest or the
trial. His object was to consult me mysteriously about some girl. He
said he had privately lent her money--which she was to repay at her
convenience. What the money was for he did not know, except that it was
somehow connected with an act of abnegation in which he had vaguely
encouraged her. The girl had since disappeared, and he was in distress
about her. He would not tell me who it was--of course now, sir, you know
as well as I it was Jessie Dymond--but asked for advice as to how to set
about finding her. He mentioned that Mortlake was leaving for Devonport
by the first train on the next day. Of old I should have connected these
two facts and sought the thread; now, as he spoke, all my thoughts were
dyed red. He was suffering perceptibly from toothache, and in answer to
my sympathetic inquiries told me it had been allowing him very little
sleep. Everything combined to invite the trial of one of my favorite
theories. I spoke to him in a fatherly way, and when I had tendered some
vague advice about the girl, and made him promise to secure a night's
rest (before he faced the arduous tram-men's meeting in the morning) by
taking a sleeping-draught, I gave him some sulfonal in a phial. It is a
new drug, which produces protracted sleep without disturbing the
digestion, and which I use myself. He promised faithfully to take the
draught; and I also exhorted him earnestly to bolt and bar and lock
himself in so as to stop up every chink or aperture by which the cold
air of the winter's night might creep into the room. I remonstrate