I knew I must keep my face and smile. I did not know why I must do these things, but I did them, looking at him and noticing again how sallow and changed he was. Then I looked about the room, mentally commenting on the evidences of the patrimony that had done him so little good--his new dressing-gown, his silver-topped bottles, and a new travelling-case, these things thrown anyhow among his older belongings. One of the newer objects I held in my hand; it was the gold cigarette case I had passed him; and I gazed smiling at it as he went on. "Yes," he told me, with humorous accusation; "Mackie told me all about it--ha ha ha! What price the old puritan Jeff now? Eh? Sad dog, sad dog!" I replied, quite calmly, that the dissipations of commissionaires were limited by their circumstances. "And what the devil are you doing being a commissionaire?" he demanded. "I'll tell you what it was, Jeff," he continued familiarly, "that failure in Method seems to me to have broken you all up. What the dickens made you fail?" I was conscious of an interior stirring of hate. What, indeed, had made me fail! "Oh, over-confidence, I suppose," I answered lightly. And he continued to talk. At last I rose and said good-night. He raised himself on one elbow in order to shake hands. "Come in again and see a chap soon," he said. "It's hellish slow up here all alone." I was already at the door, but I turned abruptly. "What do you mean?" I said. "Do you mean you're laid up? You said you weren't." But he only gave a confused little laugh. "Eh? Laid up? Of course not! Can't a chap turn in early once in a while?" "'Once in a while'?... But you said----" "That you might come in and see me? Well, do. No harm in that, is there? Say I'm going slow for a bit, that's all," he added. I agreed with him that to "go slow" for a bit was a course he might with advantage have adopted some time ago, and, though considerably puzzled, I turned slowly away. My lamp, I discovered when I reached my dwelling again, had not exploded in my absence; but I did not light it. This was not, of course, through any actual fear; it was merely part of my general nervous condition. I remember, as still further explaining that condition, that I had passed a Board School that day as the children had poured out for their morning recess of a quarter of an hour; I have said how more than commonly strident the heat seemed to make all noises; and at the sudden outburst of the children I had broken into a copious flood of perspiration. I was not much steadier now. Pushing the lamp aside I flung up my window as high as it would go, drew out my old string-mended chair, and, sitting down, began to stare at the "_Sarcey's Fluid_" advertisement across the way.