tudied with such leisurely deliberation
as we could afford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of
alert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely
close, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeball
and a little line of white. "Heaven give me memory," said I, "and I will
never wink again."

"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth.

"It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower."

"Oh, come along!" said Gibberne.

We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people
sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but
the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see.
A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent
struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were many
evidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to
a considerable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our
sensations went. We came out and walked a little way from the crowd, and
turned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed, to a picture,
smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was
impossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with an
irrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonder
of it! All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had
begun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so
far as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The New
Accelerator--" I began, but Gibberne interrupted me.

"There's that infernal old woman!" he said.

"What old woman?"

"Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods!
The temptation is strong!"

There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times.
Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched the
unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violently
with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. The
little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightest
sign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolent
repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about with
a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said something
else. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your
clothes on fire. Your linen trousers