"Thank you. I can perform that office for myself. If you will give me your address, I will forward you your handkerchief. Or, if you prefer it, I will deposit with you its value."
"Sir, I am a gentleman." He drew himself up with an assumption of dignity which was so overdone as to be ludicrous. The two last words he repeated--"A gentleman!"
"I do not doubt it. It is I who may not be a gentleman."
"I, sir, can tell a gentleman when I see one." He laid a stress upon the personal pronoun, as if he wished me to infer that such clearness of vision might be a personal peculiarity. "I will give you my address in the cab."
Willing to humour him, I suffered him to stroll up the platform at my side. I held out my hand to him when we reached a hansom.
"Your address?"
"I said I would give you my address in the cab." Leaning towards me, he spoke in that curious tone which had impressed me so unpleasantly in the railway carriage. "Get into the cab, man; I travelled from Brighton in the next compartment to yours."
I was foolish. I ought, even at the eleventh hour, to have addressed myself to an official, to have made a clean breast of it, to have told him of the accident, the unavoidable accident, which had happened on the line. I know that now too well. I knew it, dimly, then. But, at the moment, I was weak. The fellow's manner increased my state of mental confusion. In a sense, his words overwhelmed me. I yielded to him. I got into the cab. He placed himself at my side.
"Where shall I tell the man to drive?" he asked.
"Anywhere."