"How happy other people can be, confound them!" he said. "And that is why one is never so wretched as in a crowd. Omar's comparison of life to a game of chess-- 'But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon the Chequer-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and stays, And one by one back in the Closet lays--' is no doubt true enough to such a pessimistic mind as poor, fastidious, solitary FitzGerald's and those of us to whom the Creator has not given the happy acceptive temperament. But when one hears the stories that London--and I suppose all other towns and cities--has in such numbers, of frustrated affections and loveless marriages and irregular alliances, it is rather as His jig-saw puzzle that one sees life, where the least likely pieces fit together and the most likely can never be joined. Well!" He got up. "Now I'm going to be jolly again," he said. "Life, with all its bothers and disappointments and disillusions, and even with the circumstance that one has to live it chiefly with that impostor oneself, is too good to run down. There are so many little things to keep one going. Here, for example, see what I found to-day in a West End bookseller's catalogue: À KEMPIS. _Imitation of Christ_. Printed on Real Vellum (only ten copies issued). Illuminated Frontispiece and Illuminated Fronts, and all the initials illuminated. Bound in Cape Levant Morocco Red, tooled in blind design with doublures. £18 18s. net. There's a first step towards imitating the simple Nazarene! Eighteen guineas for the primer. One has no right to be doleful in a world where things like this happen." Lacey's revived spirits did me good, and on returning home I found Naomi more sweet than ever before, and even Nan conveyed some of the illusion of pleasure at my approach, although the nurse (who was otherwise her old self again) insisted that the phenomenon was purely the effect of internal disturbance. Lacey was more right than not. I did not and shall not forget what Mrs. Duckie said, because I know it to be true; but it has already sunk below the surface of memory into that woolly receptacle where so much of the past is preserved. Not often do I bring it out, but it has a way of desiring an airing between four and five A.M. when one's pulse is at its lowest and hope almost non-existent; and I am often conscious of its presence when I watch Naomi and Nan together, or, greatly daring, take Nan into my own hands. Greatly daring!--there you have it again. For Naomi does not greatly dare: she picks up this fragile pink atom as naturally and unthinkingly as a cricketer picks up the ball.