But Franks entered without speaking.

The lamplight showed a pitiful change in him; he was yellow and fishy-eyed, unshaven, disorderly in dress indeed, so well did he look the part of the despairing lover that Warburton suspected a touch of theatric consciousness.
"If you hadn't come to-night," said Will, "I should have looked you up." Franks lay limply in the armchair, staring blankly.
"I ought to have come before," he replied in low, toneless voice.

"That night when I met you, I made a fool of myself.

For one thing, I was drunk, and I've been drunk ever since." "Ha! That accounts for your dirty collar," remarked Will, in his note of dry drollery.
"Is it dirty ?" said the other, passing a finger round his neck.

"What does it matter?
A little dirt more or less, in a world so full of it--" Warburton could not contain himself; he laughed, and laughed again.