To forecast accidents, Time’s limping errors,
And take the present, with the present’s peace,
Instead of filling life’s poor day with terrors.’
About seven o’clock, Wyndham (who had come up to Dublin by the afternoon train), going down Nassau Street, finds himself face to face with a tall, big, good-humoured-looking man of about thirty-two.
‘Hallo! that you?’ cries the latter, stopping Wyndham, who, in somewhat preoccupied mood, would have gone by without seeing him. The preoccupation disappears at once, however, and it is with genuine pleasure that he grasps the hand held out to him.
‘You, Crosby, of all men!’
‘Even so.’
‘Why, last week, when we met in Paris, you told me you were going to Vienna to see a friend there.’
‘The friend came to me at Paris instead the very day after you left.’
‘But I thought you had arranged with him to go on an expedition to some unpronounceable place in Africa?’