"You were responsible for me."
"Why not leave it to Phil?" I suggested, with my genius for compromise.
"That's mean."
"Well, will you tell him yourself? No! I decline to be mixed up in it. I shan't be here. The day your parents land, I shall shift myself bag and baggage to an hotel. Isn't the simplest solution to break off the engagement? Well, you're very hard to please, you know."
I really forget how we settled the question, but the news was certainly not broken by me. The Seraph dropped in to dinner on the last night of my guardianship, and I asked him whether he thought I could improve on the Savoy as my next house of entertainment.
"But you're coming to stay with me," he said.
"My dear fellow, you've no experience of me as a guest. I don't know how long I'm staying in London."
"The longer the better, if you don't mind roughing it."
I knew there would be no "roughing it" in his immaculate mode of living, but the question was left undecided for the moment as I really felt it would be better for us both to run independently. Ten weeks of domesticity shared even with Gladys gave me a sensation of clipped wings after my inconsiderate, caravanserai existence, and—without wishing to be patronising—I had to remember that he was a man of very moderate means and would feel the cost of housing me more than I should feel it myself. The following afternoon I called round at Adelphi Terrace to acquaint him with my decision, but something seemed to have upset him; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window and I had not the heart to bother him with my own ephemeral arrangements. At the door of the flat his man apologetically asked my advice on the case; his master was eating, drinking, and smoking practically nothing, wandering about his room instead of going to bed, and gazing out into space instead of his usual daily writing.
I thought over the symptoms on my way to the Club, and decided to employ a portion of the afternoon in playing providence with Sylvia. It is a part for which I am unfitted by inclination, instinct, experience, and aptitude.