ous. "I am done with you," I said.

"Eh; what?... Who wants to frighten?... I wanted to know what's your pet
vice.... Won't tell? You might safely--I'm off.... No.... Want to tell
me mine?... No time.... I'm off.... Ask the policeman ... crossing
sweeper will do.... I'm going."

"You will have to," I said.

"What.... Dismiss me?... Throw the indispensable Soane overboard like a
squeezed lemon?... Would you?... What would Fox say?... Eh? But you
can't, my boy--not you. Tell you ... tell you ... can't.... Beforehand
with you ... sick of it.... I'm off ... to the Islands--the Islands of
the Blest.... I'm going to be an ... no, not an angel like Fox ... an
... oh, a beachcomber. Lie on white sand, in the sun ... blue sky and
palm-trees--eh?... S.S. Waikato. I'm off.... Come too ... lark ...
dismiss yourself out of all this. Warm sand, warm, mind you ... you
won't?" He had an injured expression. "Well, I'm off. See me into the
cab, old chap, you're a decent fellow after all ... not one of these
beggars who would sell their best friend ... for a little money ... or
some woman. Will see the last of me...."

I didn't believe he would reach the South Seas, but I went downstairs
and watched him march up the street with a slight stagger under the
pallid dawn. I suppose it was the lingering chill of the night that made
me shiver. I felt unbounded confidence in the future, there was nothing
now between her and me. The echo of my footsteps on the flagstones
accompanied me, filling the empty earth with the sound of my progress.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I walked along, got to my club and upstairs into my room peaceably. A
feeling of entire tranquillity had come over me. I rested after a strife
which had issued in a victory whose meaning was too great to comprehend
and enjoy at once. I only knew that it was great because there seemed
nothing more left to do. Everything reposed within me--even conscience,
even memory, reposed as in death. I had risen above them, and my
thoughts moved serenely as in a new light, as men move in sunshine above
the graves of the forgotten dead. I felt like a man at the beginning of
a long holiday--an indefinite space of idleness with some great
felicity--a felicity too great for words, too great for joy--at the end.
Everything was delicious and vague; there were no shapes, no persons.
Names flitted through my mind--Fox, Churchill, my aunt; but they were
living people seen from above, flitting in the