our dessert, and proposed coffee
in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end
that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction
to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his
dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock.
I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the
Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain
frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man in South Shields
does not go out one night with a revolver tucked away in the pocket of
his dress-suit, and turn up the next evening with a striking-looking
lady with bronze hair. Such goings-on are seen on the stage in South
Shields in melodrama, and they are the goings-on of the villain. In
the eyes of the gentle ladies my reputation was gone. I was trying to
rehabilitate myself when the chasseur brought me a telegram. I asked
permission to open it, and stepped aside.

The words of the telegram were like a ringing box on the ears.

"Tell me immediately why Lola has joined you in Algiers. --KYNNERSLEY."

Not "Dale," mark you, as he has signed himself ever since I knew him in
Eton collars, but "Kynnersley." Why has Lola joined you? Why have you
run off with Lola? What's the reason of this treacherous abduction?
Account for yourself immediately. Stand and deliver. I stood there
gaping at the words like an idiot, my blood tingling at the implied
accusation. The peremptoriness of it! The impudence of the boy! The wild
extravagance of the idea! And yet, while my head was reeling with
one buffet a memory arose and gave me another on the other side. I
remembered the preposterous attitude in which Dale had found us when he
rushed from Berlin into Lola's drawing-room.

I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge, like
a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the humour of
the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I been in sound
health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola would have been
absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous disposition of mind; for
me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast all vain and disturbing human
emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on-Sea; for me who had a spirit's
calm disregard for the petty passions and interests of mankind and
walked through the world with no other object than healing a few human
woes; for me who already saw death on