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 the other side of the river and found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to think of running hundreds of miles from home with--to say the least of it--so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea was inexpressibly and weirdly comic.
I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.
"Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs.

Avoid lunacy save for electioneering purposes .-- SIMON." Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion.