It has already been observed that my family were at the seaside. This circumstance left me sole disposer of my time and localities. How, then, resist the inclination to see out the adventure upon which I had stumbled? Let me credit myself also with a worthier motive: I saw that my companion was in no state to be left to himself,--and, really, there was no mutual friend to whom I could consign him. Accordingly I offered my arm in a manner to imply acquiescence in his proposal. We soon reached the hotel, and ascended to a room in the remote corner of a spacious wing. Clifton at once turned the key, placed his package upon the table, and proceeded to employ a stray bit of carpet in stopping a ventilator which communicated with the entry. Having satisfied himself that this passage was rendered impervious to sound, he drew two chairs up to the table, motioned me into one, and planted himself in the other with the air of a man, in popular phrase, about to make a night of it. "Did you ever hear of Herbert Vannelle?" he asked, abruptly. It can hardly be necessary to say that a substitute is here placed for the name really mentioned. I replied in the negative, and asked where the gentleman lived. "He lives nowhere on earth; he is dead,--just dead." "A friend of yours?" "A master once; now a presence eluding, haunting, torturing. He left me this manuscript; it is a 'Philosophy of the Absolute.'" (Here Clifton drew from a curiously contrived case of parchment a cluster of pages.) "It has now twenty-two hours to appear in the present century. You shall devote the night to reading it, and tell me that I have acted well." A sultry August evening, a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing of mosquitoes, and--a manuscript system of philosophy! The prospect was not inviting. The reading of other people's manuscripts is surely the crucial test of a devoted benevolence. There are few ways in which I am so little ready to oblige my fellow-men. I had, indeed, at times, been induced to inspect sundry romances in blotted embryo; but, as yet, nobody had called upon me with a system of philosophy. _Printed_ philosophy is none too easy reading. But to sit there, under the guardianship of Clifton, and spell out the dim dogmatism of some nebulous fanatic,--of course it was not to be thought of for a moment. With a _suave_ periphrasis of speech I questioned the expediency of the proposition. "I shall ring for candles that will burn during the night," said Mr. Clifton, heedless of my expostulation. "Also some refreshment. You take tea, I suppose? You shall read the first ten pages of Vannelle's writing. It is possible you may exercise self-control enough to abandon it unfinished. But you will not sleep tonight."