At Love's Cost

"Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man

can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might

have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was

cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a

pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to

be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my

senses. I ask myself why I should commit such lurid folly. Last night I

was sitting over the fire with a book--for it was cold, though not so

cold as this," the speaker shivered and dragged the collar of his

overcoat still higher--"at peace with all the world, with Omar purring

placidly by my side, and my soul wrapped in that serenity which belongs

to a man who has long since rid himself of that inconvenient

appendage--a conscience, and has hit upon the right brand of

cigarettes, and now--"

He paused to sigh, to groan indeed, and shifted himself uneasily in the

well-padded seat of the luxurious mail-phaeton.

"When Williams brought me your note, vilely written--were you sober,

Stafford?--blandly asking me to join you in this mad business, I smiled

to myself as I pitched the note on the fire. Omar smiled too, the very

cigarette smiled. I said to myself I would see you blowed first; that

nothing would induce me to join you, that I'd read about the lakes too

much and too often to venture upon them in the early part of June; in

fact, had no desire to see the lakes at any time or under any

conditions. I told Omar that I would see you in the lowest pit of

Tophet before I would go with you to--whatever the name of this place

is. And yet, here I am."

The speaker paused in his complaint to empty a pool water from his

mackintosh, and succeeded--in turning it over his own leg.

He groaned again, and continued.

"And yet, here I am. My dear Stafford, I do not wish to upbraid you; I

am simply making to myself a confession of weakness which would be

pitiable in a stray dog, but which in a man of my years, with my

experience of the world and reputation for common sense, is simply

criminal. I do not wish to reproach you; I am quite aware that no

reproach, not even the spectacle of my present misery would touch your

callous and, permit me to frankly add, your abominably selfish nature;

but I do want to ask quite calmly and without any display of temper:

what the blazes you wanted to come this way round, and why you wanted

me with you?"