"Go with you to your door," he mumbled and started forward to the little
gate where the shadowy figure of Mrs. Fyne hovered, clearly on the
lookout for him. She was alone. The children must have been already in
bed and I saw no attending girl-friend shadow near her vague but
unmistakable form, half-lost in the obscurity of the little garden.

I heard Fyne exclaim "Nothing" and then Mrs. Fyne's well-trained,
responsible voice uttered the words, "It's what I have said," with
incisive equanimity. By that time I had passed on, raising my hat.
Almost at once Fyne caught me up and slowed down to my strolling gait
which must have been infinitely irksome to his high pedestrian faculties.
I am sure that all his muscular person must have suffered from awful
physical boredom; but he did not attempt to charm it away by
conversation. He preserved a portentous and dreary silence. And I was
bored too. Suddenly I perceived the menace of even worse boredom. Yes!
He was so silent because he had something to tell me.

I became extremely frightened. But man, reckless animal, is so made that
in him curiosity, the paltriest curiosity, will overcome all terrors,
every disgust, and even despair itself. To my laconic invitation to come
in for a drink he answered by a deep, gravely accented: "Thanks, I will"
as though it were a response in church. His face as seen in the
lamplight gave me no clue to the character of the impending
communication; as indeed from the nature of things it couldn't do, its
normal expression being already that of the utmost possible seriousness.
It was perfect and immovable; and for a certainty if he had something
excruciatingly funny to tell me it would be all the same.

He gazed at me earnestly and delivered himself of some weighty remarks on