"Dry up, you old Geyser, yourself. I'm getting it, not you. You'd spout
if you'd had to sit tight with all the gas in the shop blazing away under
you for the last hour. If you can turn it off at the meter, turn it. I
can't. No, I won't have another cup of tea. And I won't get up and clear
out, I'm going to sit here another five minutes. I'm not well, I tell
you, and it relieves me to talk about it. I don't care if you don't
listen. Or if you do. I'm past caring.

"D'you notice that I didn't speak a word to her--not one blessed word the
whole time? I should have choked if I'd tried to. I didn't want to look
at her, to think of her. That's why I told that rotten story, just to
keep myself going. What a blethering idiot she must have thought me! What
a putrid ass! The sea--And _me_!

"And the way she looked at me--"

I said, "D'you mean to say, Jevons, it didn't happen?"

And he groaned. "Oh, it _happened_ all right. I can't invent things to
save my life.

"God! It isn't even as if she was pretty. I could understand _that_."

He grabbed his throat suddenly and began to cough.

I tried to be kind to him. "Look here," I said, "old chap. I'm awfully
sorry if it takes you this way. But it's no good."

He turned on me coughing and choking. I cannot remember all he said or
half the things he called me, but it was something like this: "You