To this absurd tirade I replied not a word, but stood silently regarding him. I dare say my gaze was of the most chilling character and steady. He endured it but a moment. His eyes fell, his bravado vanished, he fumbled with the cutlery. Quite abashed he was. “Come, your explanation!” I said curtly, divining that the moment was one in which to adopt a tone with him. He wriggled a bit, crumpling a roll with panic fingers. “Come, come!” I commanded. His face brightened, though with an intention most obviously false. He coughed--a cough of pure deception. Not only were his eyes averted from mine, but they were glassed to an uncanny degree. The fingers wrought piteously at the now plastic roll. “My word, the chap was taken bad; had to be seen to, what! Revived, I mean to say. All piano Johnnies that way--nervous wrecks, what! Spells! Spells, man--spells!” “Come, come!” I said crisply. The glassed eyes were those of one hypnotized. “In the carriage--to the hyphen chap’s place, to be sure. Fainting spell--weak heart, what! No stimulants about. Passing house! Perhaps have stimulants--heart tablets, er--beer--things of that sort. Lead him in. Revive him. Quite well presently, but not well enough to go on. Couldn’t let a piano Johnny die on our hands, what! Inquest, evidence, witnesses--all that silly rot. Save his life, what! Presence of mind! Kind hearts, what! Humanity! Do as much for any chap. Not let him die like a dog in the gutter, what! Get no credit, though----” His curiously mechanical utterance trailed off to be lost in a mere husky murmur. The glassy stare was still at my wall. I have in the course of my eventful career had occasion to mark the varying degrees of plausibility with which men speak untruths, but never, I confidently aver, have I beheld one lie with so piteous a futility. The art--and I dare say with diplomat chaps and that sort it may properly be called an art--demands as its very essence that the speaker seem to be himself convinced of the truth of that which he utters. And the Honourable George in his youth mentioned for the Foreign Office! I turned away. The exhibition was quite too indecent. I left him to mince at his meagre fare. As I glanced his way at odd moments thereafter, he would be muttering feverishly to himself. I mean to say, he no longer _was_ himself. He presently made his way to the street, looking neither to right nor left. He had, in truth, the dazed manner of one stupefied by some powerful narcotic. I wondered pityingly when I should again behold him--if it might be that his poor wits were bedevilled past mending.