II

THE EIDOLONS OF BROOKS ALFORD


I should like to give the story of Alford's experiences just as Wanhope
told it, sitting with us before the glowing hearth in the Turkish room,
one night after the other diners at our club had gone away to digest
their dinners at the theatre, or in their bachelor apartments up-town,
or on the late trains which they were taking north, south, and west; or
had hurried back to their offices to spend the time stolen from rest in
overwork for which their famished nerves would duly revenge themselves.
It was undoubtedly overwork which preceded Alford's experiences if it
did not cause them, for he was pretty well broken from it when he took
himself off in the early summer, to put the pieces together as best he
could by the seaside. But this was a fact which Wanhope was not obliged
to note to us, and there were certain other commonplaces of our
knowledge of Alford which he could omit without omitting anything
essential to our understanding of the facts which he dealt with so
delicately, so electly, almost affectionately, coaxing each point into
the fittest light, and then lifting his phrase from it, and letting it
stand alone in our consciousness. I remember particularly how he touched
upon the love-affair which was supposed to have so much to do with
Alford's break-up, and how he dismissed it to its proper place in the
story. As he talked on, with scarcely an interruption either from the
eager credulity of Rulledge or the doubt of Minver, I heard with a
sensuous comfort--I can use no other word--the far-off click of the