o earnest
was the generous impulse by which he now felt himself to be prompted,
that before Adams could reply to the invitation he had begun already to
run over mentally the courses he was prepared to order. For a colossal,
a consolatory, an unforgettable dinner he was determined that it should
be--such a dinner as he permitted himself only upon the rare occasions
when one of his intimate friends had lost heavily in stocks or been
abandoned by his wife. "Come to Sherry's," he urged again, halting in
the ecstatic working of his mind, "and I promise you that we will make
an evening."

But the sly incarnate devil which lurked in Adams in the form of an
ironic spirit asserted itself with an explosion which shook the
plethoric gravity with which Perry contemplated an orgy of indigestion.
The universal scheme appeared planned to fulfil the law of a Titanic
humour, and his own credulity and Connie's indiscretions showed suddenly
to Adams as mere mote-like jests which circled in a general convulsion
of Nature's irony.

"Well, you are a capital fellow," he stammered, after a moment, while
the spasm of his unholy laughter rocked him from head to foot. "I--I'd
like it of all things--but I can't. The fact is it is all so funny--the
whole business of life."

Even as he uttered the words he realised that to Perry they would convey
an infamous lightness, but at the thought his hysterical humour
redoubled in its energy. It was as if he stood outside--afar off--and
watched as a god the little tangled eccentricities of earth. And they
_were_ little, even though Perry should continue to regard the situation
with such large magnificence.

By the time, however, that he had parted from Perry Bridewell and turned
in at his own door, the gravity of the occasion had grown almost
oppressive in his reflections. Connie had gone an hour before--he was
too late to have detained her upon a pretext--and while sitting
speechless before the dinner he could not eat--his heated imagination
wove visions of horror in which his wife was entangled as a fly in a
spider's web. What if Connie were really possessed by the influence of
some drug which rendered her incapable of willing rationally? What if he
missed her at the entrance to the opera? Or what if--most desperate
supposition--she should, in the event of his finding her, refuse to
accept his manufactured excuse to recall her home? She was capable, he
knew, of any recklessness, but he had never for a