g R., scowling at the
fire again, "yes, it's a devilish unpleasant thing to go serenely on our
flowery way, pitying and condemning the sins and follies of others and
sublimely unconscious of our own until one day--ah, yes--one day we meet
Ourselves face to face and see beneath all our pitiful shams and
hypocrisies and know ourselves at last for what we really are--behold
the decay of faculties, the degeneration of intellect bred of sloth and
inanition and know ourselves at last--for exactly what we are!"

Mr. Brimberly stared at the preoccupation of his master's scowling brow
and grim-set mouth, and, clutching a soft handful of whisker, murmured:
"Certingly, sir!"

"When I was a boy," continued Ravenslee absently, "I used to dream of
the wonderful things I would do when I was a man--by the way, you're
quite sure I'm not boring you--?"

"No, sir--certingly not, sir--indeed, sir!"

"Take another cigar, Brimberly--oh, put it in your pocket, it will do
to--er--to add to your collection! But, as I was saying, as a boy I was
full of a godlike ambition--but, as I grew up, ambition and all the
noble things it leads to, sickened and died--died of a surfeit of
dollars! And to-day I am thirty-five and feel that I can't--that I never
shall--do anything worth while--"

"But, sir," exclaimed Mr. Brimberly with a bland and reassuring smile,
"you are one as don't have to do nothing--you're rich!"

Mr. Ravenslee started.

"Rich!" he cried, and turning, he glanced at Mr. Brimberly, and his
square chin looked so very square and his grey eyes so very piercing
that Mr. Brimberly, loosing his whisker, coughed again and shifted his
gaze to the Persian rug beneath his feet; yet when Young R. spoke again,
his voice was very soft and sleepy.

"Rich!" he repeated, "yes, that's just the unspeakable hell of it--it's
money that has crippled all endeavours and made me what I am! Rich? I'm
so rich that my friends are all acquaintances--so rich that I might buy
anything in the world except what I most desire--so rich that I am tired
of life, the world, and everything in the world, and have been seriously
considering a--er--a radical change. It is a comfort to know that we may
all of us find oblivion when we so desire."

"Oblivion!" nodded Mr. Brimberly, mouthing the word sonorously,
"oblivion, sir, certingly--my own sentiments exactly, sir--for, though
not being a marrying man myself, sir, I regard it with a truly reverent
heye and 'umbly su