"But I'm going to sleep," he answered. "I've got to!"
"We all have to," I platitudinously remarked. "But there are times when we all don't."
He laughed a curious little mirthless laugh.
"Are you ever troubled that way?" he asked.
We stood there facing each other, like two kindred ghosts communing amid the quietness of a catacomb. Then I laughed, but not so bitterly, I hope, as he had done.
"I've walked this square," I told him, "a thousand times to your one."
"I've been doing it here for the last three hours," he quietly confessed.
"And it's done you up," I rejoined. "And what we both need is a quiet smoke and an hour or two with our feet up on something?"
"That's very good of you," he had the grace to admit, as his gaze followed mine toward the house door. "But there are a number of things I've got to think out."
He was a decent sort. There was no doubt of that. But it was equally plain that he was in a bad way about something or other.