that November afternoon, like a cast-out dog, in such awful, unutterable
agony of mind, twenty-three years ago, when Gyp was born. And then to be
told at the door--he, with no right to enter, he, loving as he believed
man never loved woman--to be told at the door that SHE was dead--dead in
bearing what he and she alone knew was their child! Up and down in the
fog, hour after hour, knowing her time was upon her; and at last to be
told that! Of all fates that befall man, surely the most awful is to
love too much.

Queer that his route should take him past the very house to-day, after
this new bereavement! Accursed luck--that gout which had sent him to
Wiesbaden, last September! Accursed luck that Gyp had ever set eyes on
this fellow Fiorsen, with his fatal fiddle! Certainly not since Gyp had
come to live with him, fifteen years ago, had he felt so forlorn and fit
for nothing. To-morrow he would get back to Mildenham and see what hard
riding would do. Without Gyp--to be without Gyp! A fiddler! A chap who
had never been on a horse in his life! And with his crutch-handled cane
he switched viciously at the air, as though carving a man in two.

His club, near Hyde Park Corner, had never seemed to him so desolate.
From sheer force of habit he went into the card-room. The afternoon had
so darkened that electric light already burned, and there were the usual
dozen of players seated among the shaded gleams falling decorously on
dark-wood tables, on the backs of chairs, on cards and tumblers, the
little gilded coffee-cups, the polished nails of fingers holding
cigars. A crony challenged him to piquet. He sat down listless. That
three-legged whist--bridge--had always offended his fastidiousness--a
mangled short cut of a game! Poker had something blatant in it. Piquet,
though out of fashion, remained for him the only game worth playing--the
only game which still had style. He held good cards and rose the winner