"Hell and fire, man! Do you imagine that I am sitting here stuffing you
chock-full of lies?" I roared furiously. "Perhaps you don't even believe
that a man of the name of Happolati exists! I never saw your match for
obstinacy and malice in any old man. What the devil ails you? Perhaps,
too, into the bargain, you have been all this while thinking to yourself I
am a poverty-stricken fellow, sitting here in my Sunday-best without even
a case full of cigarettes in my pocket. Let me tell you such treatment as
yours is a thing I am not accustomed to, and I won't endure it, the Lord
strike me dead if I will--neither from you nor any one else, do you know
that?"

The man had risen with his mouth agape; he stood tongue-tied and listened
to my outbreak until the end. Then he snatched his parcel from off the
seat and went, ay, nearly ran, down the patch, with the short, tottering
steps of an old man.

I leant back and looked at the retreating figure that seemed to shrink at
each step as it passed away. I do not know from where the impression came,
but it appeared to me that I had never in my life seen a more vile back
than this one, and I did not regret that I had abused the creature before
he left me.

The day began to decline, the sun sank, it commenced to rustle lightly in
the trees around, and the nursemaids who sat in groups near the parallel
bars made ready to wheel their perambulators home. I was calmed and in
good spirit. The excitement I had just laboured under quieted down little
by little, and I grew weaker, more languid, and began to feel drowsy.
Neither did the quantity of bread I had eaten cause me any longer any
particular distress. I leant against the back of the seat in the best of
humours, closed my eyes, and got more and more sleepy. I dozed, and was