"Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be.

When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my senses.

I ask myself why I should commit such lurid folly.

Last night I was sitting over the fire with a book--for it was cold, though not so cold as this," the speaker shivered and dragged the collar of his overcoat still higher--"at peace with all the world, with Omar purring placidly by my side, and my soul wrapped in that serenity which belongs to a man who has long since rid himself of that inconvenient appendage--a conscience, and has hit upon the right brand of cigarettes, and now--" He paused to sigh, to groan indeed, and shifted himself uneasily in the well-padded seat of the luxurious mail-phaeton.
"When Williams brought me your note, vilely written--were you sober, Stafford ?--blandly asking me to join you in this mad business, I smiled to myself as I pitched the note on the fire.

Omar smiled too, the very cigarette smiled.