‘I must not take a cigar,’ said Somerset.
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Godall. ‘But now I come to look at you more closely, I perceive that you are changed. My poor boy, I hope there is nothing wrong?’
Somerset burst into tears.
EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN
On a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street. It was a place he had visited but once before: the memory of what had followed on that visit and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return. Even now, he looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers.
The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner’s arrival. On a second glance, it seemed to the latter that he recognised him.
‘By Jove,’ he thought, ‘unquestionably Somerset!’
And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste to curiosity.
‘“Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,”’ said the shopman to himself, in the tone of one considering a verse. ‘I suppose it would be too much to say “orotunda,” and yet how noble it were! “Or opulent orotunda strike the sky.” But that is the bitterness of arts; you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.’
‘Somerset, my dear fellow,’ said Challoner, ‘is this a masquerade?’