"For myself, I don't mind confessing, Humphrey, that there have been women—Don't start; there isn't even a Yule-log smouldering on my heart's hearth to-day. I can stir the smoking embers safely. I say there have been women—a woman I'll say, even—a nursemaid, whom I have seen in this park—a perfect Juno. She was well-born I'd swear, by her delicate ears, her instep, her curved nostrils—"
"Did you ever approach your goddess near enough to catch her curved articulation, Colonel? Or doubtless it flowed in angles, Anglo-Saxon pura."
"You are flippant, Humphrey. I say if this woman had had educational advantages and—and if my affairs had looked up a little, well—there's no telling! And yet, to tell you this to-day does not even warm my heart."
"Nor rattle a skeleton within its closet?"
"Not a rattle about me, sir, excepting the rattle of these beastly newspapers on my chest. Have a smoke, Humphrey?"
The Colonel presented a handful of half-burned cigar-stubs.
"No choice. They're all twenty-five-centers, assorted from a Waldorf lot."
"Thanks."
Humphrey took three. The Colonel, reserving one for his own use, dropped the rest into his outer pocket.
And now eleven men passed, smoking, eleven unapproachables, before one dropped a burning stump.