Only one thing was needed to fill my cup of bitterness, and this it
was that specially occupied me as I dressed for dinner this evening.
Two days more in this dead and fermenting city and my slavery would
be at an end. Yes, but--irony of ironies!--I had nowhere to go to!
The Morven Lodge party was breaking up. A dreadful rumour as to an
engagement which had been one of its accursed fruits tormented me
with the fresh certainty that I had not been missed, and bred in me
that most desolating brand of cynicism which is produced by defeat
through insignificance. Invitations for a later date, which I had
declined in July with a gratifying sense of being much in request,
now rose up spectrally to taunt me. There was at least one which I
could easily have revived, but neither in this case nor in any other
had there been any renewal of pressure, and there are moments when
the difference between proposing oneself and surrendering as a prize
to one of several eagerly competing hostesses seems too crushing to
be contemplated. My own people were at Aix for my father's gout; to
join them was _a pis aller_ whose banality was repellent. Besides,
they would be leaving soon for our home in Yorkshire, and I was not a
prophet in my own country. In short, I was at the extremity of
depression.

The usual preliminary scuffle on the staircase prepared me for the
knock and entry of Withers. (One of the things which had for some
time ceased to amuse me was the laxity of manners, proper to the
season, among the servants of the big block of chambers where I
lived.) Withers demurely handed me a letter bearing a German
post-mark and marked 'Urgent'. I had just finished dressing, and was
collecting my money and gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity broke
in upon my depression as I sat down to open it. A comer on the