My good man, there is absolutely nothing we all know except that we shall certainly die, one day, and from this one bare fact more utterly contradictory inferences have been drawn than I can afford ink to enumerate. Nothing could be more certain than this bare fact, and can you show me anything more productive of human uncertainty? I trow not. What do you know of the private life of the man in the next house? Have you a friend who cannot tell you from one to three melodramatic tales, lying quite within his experience, at which you will gasp, "Why, it's as exciting as a novel!" The best novels never get into print and the most blood-curdling, goose-pimpling dramas are played by the boxholders. The longer I live the more firmly am I convinced that the really quiet life is relatively rare. To Roger, indeed, after his climax in the four-wheeler, it seemed impossible that life could ever again be quiet. If I have not impressed you with the idea that he was a decent sort of man, I have wasted a whole chapter and demonstrated the folly of attempting authorship at my age, and you will be but poorly prepared to learn that when the cabby knocked at the glass, after heaven knows how many minutes of interested observation, Roger discovered his identity again--and loathed it. His conduct appeared to him indescribably beneath contempt, his situation deplorable. Margarita, sobbing quietly in her corner, seemed unlikely to raise either his spirits or his estimate of himself. Opening the door of the carriage he repeated his directions to the too-confidential driver and spoke stiffly to his companion. "I will not attempt to excuse myself to you," he said, "for it would be pointless. If you can believe me, I will try my best to help you to your friends. Can you not tell me the name of one?" "What is your name?" she asked, her voice only a little shaken from her sobs, which had ceased as soon as he began to speak. "My name is Roger Bradley," he answered promptly. "Then that is the name of my first friend," said Margarita Josephine Dolores, "but I hope to find others." Roger's revulsion of feeling was so great, his state of mind so perturbed and confounded that he crushed them into a short, husky laugh. Had he been the hero of a novel he would undoubtedly have launched into a bitter speech, but he did not. "Others like me?" he said briefly, and all the bitterness of the novel-hero was there if Margarita had been able to read it. But she only smiled, a little uncertainly, it is true, and replied: "Yes, I should like them like you--only not so strong," she added softly, with a shy glance at her wrists. It has been quite unnecessary for me to consult letters or diaries to give me a very clear insight into Roger's feelings at this point, for I myself have experienced them. It was when I took Margarita out in a rowboat and she began to rock herself in it. "Don't do that, Margarita!" I cried. "That is an idiotic trick." She continued to rock it.