"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?"

The speaker, a slightly built man, just beyond the vague line of
"young," glanced up with his dark, somewhat sombre and yet softly
cynical eyes at the face of his companion who was driving. This