To be in anger with one whom one loves works, indeed, like madness in the blood.
Mac, as he plunged down the hill, was lashing himself into a fury against Leslie. He turned into a saki shop and drank half a pint of that seemingly innocuous liquor; then he went to the office, took a whisky bottle from a cupboard, and poured himself out a liberal peg.
He was an abstemious man as a rule, but once he took the bit between his teeth nothing on God’s earth except death would stop him, till the next morning’s headache came.
At five he recognized that he was hopelessly embarked on a grand drunk, and determined to take a riksha over to Mogi; there complete the business, and return in time next morning to see Leslie before he started.
Just before starting from the hotel a waiter brought him out a cablegram from Shanghai, which had come round from the office. It was relative to a bank disaster that had occurred in India. He read it, stuffed it into his pocket, and ordered the Djin to proceed.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE GARDEN-PARTY
Within an hour of the great city of Nagasaki, in the midst of a park that was at the same time half a garden, lay the country residence of Mr. Kamamura; once a man who carried two swords, with the longer of which he would have beheaded you for two words and have done it with neatness and despatch, now a gentleman in a frock-coat and tall hat, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a smile.