s great club crony, Sir Paul Spinner, the "city magnate."

Sir Paul, embossed with carbuncles, got out, and was presently being
presented to Eve,--for the friendship between Mr. Prohack and Sir Paul
had been a purely club friendship. Like many such friendships it had had
no existence beyond the club, and neither of the cronies knew anything
of real interest about the domestic circumstances of the other. Sir Paul
was very apologetic to Eve, but he imperiously desired an interview with
Mr. Prohack at once. Eve most agreeably and charmingly said that she
would take a little preliminary airing in the car by herself, and return
for her husband. Mr. Prohack would have preferred her to wait for him;
but, though Eve was sagacious enough at all normal times, when she got
an idea into her head that idea ruthlessly took precedence of everything
else in the external world. Moreover the car was her private creation,
and she was incapable of resisting its attractions one minute longer.

II

"I hear you've come into half a million, Arthur," said Paul Spinner,
after he had shown himself very friendly and optimistic about Mr.
Prohack's health and given the usual bulletin about his own carbuncles
and the shortcomings of the club.

"But you don't believe it, Paul."

"I don't," agreed Paul. "Things get about pretty fast in the City and we
can size them up fairly well; and I should say, putting two and two
together, that a hundred and fifty thousand would be nearer the mark."

"It certainly is," said Mr. Prohack.

If Paul Spinner had suggested fifty thousand, Mr. Prohack would have
corrected him, but being full of base instincts he had no impulse to
correct the larger estimate, which was just as inaccurate.

"Well, well! It's a most romantic story and I congratulate you on it.
No such luck ever happened to me." Sir Paul made this remark in a tone
to indicate that he had had practically no luck himself. And he really
believed that he had had no luck, though the fact was that he touched no
enterprise that failed. Every year he signed a huger cheque for
super-tax, and every year he signed it with a gesture signifying that he
was signing his own ruin.

This distressing illusion of Sir Paul's was probably due to his
carbuncles, which of all pathological phenomena are among the most
productive of a pessimistic philosophy. The carbuncles were well known
up and down Harley Street. They were always to be cured and they never
were cured