.

It's perfectly ridiculous to confess that they all seem fatal to me now; but writing to you like this in all sincerity I don't mind appearing ridiculous.

I suppose fatality must be expressed, embodied, like other forces of this earth; and if so why not in such people as well as in other more glorious or more frightful figures?
We remained, however, long enough to let Mr.Blunt's half-hidden acrimony develop itself or prey on itself in further talk about the man Allegre and the girl Rita.

Mr.Blunt, still addressing Mills with that story, passed on to what he called the second act, the disclosure, with, what he called, the characteristic Allegre impudence--which surpassed the impudence of kings, millionaires, or tramps, by many degrees--the revelation of Rita's existence to the world at large.

It wasn't a very large world, but then it was most choicely composed.