I knew I must keep my face and smile. I did not know why I must do these things, but I did them, looking at him and noticing again how sallow and changed he was. Then I looked about the room, mentally commenting on the evidences of the patrimony that had done him so little good—his new dressing-gown, his silver-topped bottles, and a new travelling-case, these things thrown anyhow among his older belongings. One of the newer objects I held in my hand; it was the gold cigarette case I had passed him; and I gazed smiling at it as he went on.
"Yes," he told me, with humorous accusation; "Mackie told me all about it—ha ha ha! What price the old puritan Jeff now? Eh? Sad dog, sad dog!"
I replied, quite calmly, that the dissipations of commissionaires were limited by their circumstances.
"And what the devil are you doing being a commissionaire?" he demanded. "I'll tell you what it was, Jeff," he continued familiarly, "that failure in Method seems to me to have broken you all up. What the dickens made you fail?"
I was conscious of an interior stirring of hate. What, indeed, had made me fail!
"Oh, over-confidence, I suppose," I answered lightly.
And he continued to talk.
At last I rose and said good-night. He raised himself on one elbow in order to shake hands.
"Come in again and see a chap soon," he said. "It's hellish slow up here all alone."
I was already at the door, but I turned abruptly.