"I hope so."
"I wonder you can stay away."
"Oh, one gets a bit deadened after an hour or so. One needs to be freshened up. So long as I don't bore you—"
I laughed, and held out my cigarette-case.
"I rather wonder you smoke," I murmured, after giving him a light. "Nicotine's a sort of drug. Doesn't it soothe you? Don't you lose just a little something of the tremors and things?"
He looked at me gravely.
"By Jove!" he ejaculated, "I never thought of that. Perhaps you're right. 'Pon my word, I must think that over."
I wondered whether he were secretly laughing at me. Here was a man to whom—so I conceived, with an effort of the imagination—the loss or gain of a few hundred pounds could hardly matter. I told him I had spoken in jest. "To give up tobacco might," I said, "intensify the pleasant agonies of a gambler staking his little all. But in your case—well, I don't see where the pleasant agonies come in."
"You mean because I'm beastly rich?"
"Rich," I amended.