Mr. Brimberly bowed and took a chair, sitting very upright and attentive while his master frowned into the fire.

“Thirty-five is a ripe age, Brimberly!” said he at last; “a man should have made something of his life—at thirty-five!”

“Certingly, sir!”

“And I’m getting quite into the sere and yellow leaf, am I not, Brimberly?”

Mr. Brimberly raised a plump, protesting hand.

“‘Ardly that, sir, ‘ardly that!” said he, “we are hall of us getting on, of course—”

“Where to, Brimberly? On where, Brimberly—on what?”

“Why, sir, since you ask me, I should answer—begging your parding—’eavens knows, sir!”

“Precisely! Anyway, I’m going there fast.”

“Where, sir?”

“Heaven knows, Brimberly.”

“Ah—er—certingly, sir!”

“Now, Brimberly, as a hard-headed, matter-of-fact, common-sense being, what would you suggest for a poor devil who is sick and tired of everything and most of all—of himself?”

“Why, sir, I should prescribe for that man change of hair, sir—travel, sir. I should suggest to that man Hafghanistan or Hasia Minor, or both, sir. There’s your noo yacht a-laying in the river, sir—”

His master leant his square chin upon his square fist and still frowning at the fire, gently shook his head.

“My good Brimberly,” he sighed, “haven’t I travelled in most parts of the world?”

“Why, yes, sir, you’ve travelled, sir, very much so indeed, sir—you’ve shot lions and tigers and a helephant or so, and exchanged sentiments with raging ‘eathen—as rage in nothing but a string o’ beads—but what about your noomerous possessions in Europe, sir?”

“Ah, yes,” nodded Young R., “I do possess some shanties and things over there, don’t I, Brimberly?”

“Shanties, sir!” Mr. Brimberly blinked, and his whiskers bristled in horrified reproof. “Shanties!—Oh, dear me, sir!” he murmured. “Shanties—your magnificent town mansion situate in Saint James’s Square, London, as your respected father hacquired from a royal dook, sir! Shanties!—your costly and helegant res-eye-dence in Park Lane, sir!”

“Hum!” said Young R. moodily.

“Then, in Scotland, sir, we ‘ave your castle of Drumlochie, sir—rocks, turrets, battlements, ‘ighly grim and romantic, sir!”

“Ha!” sighed his young master, frowning at his cigar.

“Next, sir,—in Italy we find your ancient Roman villa, sir—halabaster pillows and columns, sir—very historical though a trifle wore with wars and centuries of centoorians, sir, wherefore I would humbly suggest a coat or two of paint, sir, applied beneath your very own eye, sir—”

“No, Brimberly,” murmured Young R., “paint might have attractions—Italy, none!”

“Certingly not, sir, certingly not! Which brings us to your schloss in Germany, sir—”

“Nor Germany! Lord, Brimberly, are there many more?”

“Ho, yes, sir, plenty!” nodded Mr, Brimberly, “your late honoured and respected father, sir, were a rare ‘and at buying palaces, sir; ‘e collected ‘em, as you might say, like some folks collects postage starmps, sir!”

“And a collection of the one is about as useless as a collection of the other, Brimberly!”

“Why, true, sir, one man can’t live in a dozen places all at once, but why not work round ‘em in turn, beginning, say, at your imposing Venetian palazzo—canals, sir, gondoleers—picturesque though dampish? Or your shally in the Tyro-leen Halps, sir, or—”

“Brimberly, have the goodness to—er—shut up!”

“Certingly, sir.”

“To-day is my birthday, Brimberly, and to-night I’ve reached a kind of ‘jumping off’ place in my life, and—between you and me—I’m seriously thinking of—er—jumping off!”

“I crave parding, sir?”

“I’m thirty-five years old,” continued Young R., his frown growing blacker, “and I’ve never done anything really worth while in all my useless life! Have the goodness to look at me, will you?”

“With pleasure, sir!”

“Well, what do I look like?”

“The very hacme of a gentleman, sir!”

“Kind of you, Brimberly, but I know myself for an absolutely useless thing—a purposeless, ambitionless wretch, drifting on to God knows what. I’m a hopeless wreck, a moral derelict, and it has only occurred to me to-night—but”—and here the speaker paused to flick the ash from his cigar—”I fear I’m boring you?”

“No, sir—ho, no, not at all, indeed, sir!”

“You’re very kind, Brimberly—light a cigarette! Ah, no, pardon me, you prefer my cigars, I know.”

“Why—why, sir—” stammered Mr. Brimberly, laying a soothing hand upon his twitching whisker, “indeed, I—I—”

“Oh—help yourself, pray!”

Hereupon Mr. Brimberly took a cigar very much at random, and, while Young R. watched with lazy interest, proceeded to cut it—though with singularly clumsy fingers.

“A light, Mr. Brimberly—allow me!”

So Ravenslee held the light while Mr. Brimberly puffed his cigar to a glow, though to be sure he coughed once and choked, as he met Young R.’s calm grey eye.

“Now,” pursued his master, “if you’re quite comfortable, Mr. Brimberly, perhaps you’ll be good enough to—er—hearken further to my tale of woe?”

Mr. Brimberly choked again and recovering, smoothed his writhing whiskers and murmured: “It would be a honour!”

“First, then, Brimberly, have you ever hated yourself—I mean, despised yourself so utterly and thoroughly that the bare idea of your existence makes you angry and indignant?”

“Why—no, sir,” answered Mr. Brimberly, staring, “I can’t say as I ‘ave, sir.”

“No,” said his master with another keen glance, “and I don’t suppose you ever will!” Now here again, perhaps because of the look or something in Young R.’s tone, Mr. Brimberly took occasion to emit a small, apologetic cough.

“You have never felt yourself to be a—cumberer of the earth, Brimberly?”

Mr. Brimberly, having thought the matter over, decided that he had not.

“You are not given to introspection, Brimberly?”

“Intro—ahem! No, sir, not precisely—’ardly that, sir, and then only very occasional, sir!”

“Then you’ve never got on to yourself—got wise to yourself—seen yourself as you really are?”

Mr. Brimberly goggled and groped for his whisker.

“I mean,” pursued his master, “you have never seen all your secret weaknesses and petty meannesses stripped stark naked, have you?”

“N-naked, sir!” faltered Mr. Brimberly, “very distressing indeed, sir—oh, dear me!”

“It’s a devilish unpleasant thing,” continued Young R., scowling at the fire again, “yes, it’s a devilish unpleasant thing to go serenely on our flowery way, pitying and condemning the sins and follies of others and sublimely unconscious of our own until one day—ah, yes—one day we meet Ourselves face to face and see beneath all our pitiful shams and hypocrisies and know ourselves at last for what we really are—behold the decay of faculties, the degeneration of intellect bred of sloth and inanition and know ourselves at last—for exactly what we are!”

Mr. Brimberly stared at the preoccupation of his master’s scowling brow and grim-set mouth, and, clutching a soft handful of whisker, murmured: “Certingly, sir!”

“When I was a boy,” continued Ravenslee absently, “I used to dream of the wonderful things I would do when I was a man—by the way, you’re quite sure I’m not boring you—?”

“No, sir—certingly not, sir—indeed, sir!”

“Take another cigar, Brimberly—oh, put it in your pocket, it will do to—er—to add to your collection! But, as I was saying, as a boy I was full of a godlike ambition—but, as I grew up, ambition and all the noble things it leads to, sickened and died—died of a surfeit of dollars! And to-day I am thirty-five and feel that I can’t—that I never shall—do anything worth while—”

“But, sir,” exclaimed Mr. Brimberly with a bland and reassuring smile, “you are one as don’t have to do nothing—you’re rich!”

Mr. Ravenslee started.

“Rich!” he cried, and turning, he glanced at Mr. Brimberly, and his square chin looked so very square and his grey eyes so very piercing that Mr. Brimberly, loosing his whisker, coughed again and shifted his gaze to the Persian rug beneath his feet; yet when Young R. spoke again, his voice was very soft and sleepy.

“Rich!” he repeated, “yes, that’s just the unspeakable hell of it—it’s money that has crippled all endeavours and made me what I am! Rich? I’m so rich that my friends are all acquaintances—so rich that I might buy anything in the world except what I most desire—so rich that I am tired of life, the world, and everything in the world, and have been seriously considering a—er—a radical change. It is a comfort to know that we may all of us find oblivion when we so desire.”

“Oblivion!” nodded Mr. Brimberly, mouthing the word sonorously, “oblivion, sir, certingly—my own sentiments exactly, sir—for, though not being a marrying man myself, sir, I regard it with a truly reverent heye and ‘umbly suggest that for you such a oblivious change would be—”

“Brimberly,” said Young R., turning to stare in lazy wonder, “where in the world are you getting to now?”

Mr. Brimberly coughed and touched a whisker with dubious finger.

“Wasn’t you allooding to—hem!—to matrimony, sir?”

“Matrimony! Lord, no! Hardly so desperate a course as that, Brimberly. I was considering the advisability of—er—this!” And opening a drawer in the escritoire, Young R. held up a revolver, whereat Mr. Brimberly’s whiskers showed immediate signs of extreme agitation, and he started to his feet.

“Mr. Ravenslee, sir—for the love o’ Gawd!” he exclaimed, “if it’s a choice between the two—try matrimony first, it’s so much—so much wholesomer, sir!”

“Is it, Brimberly? Let me see, there are about five hundred highly dignified matrons in this—er—great city, wholly eager and anxious to wed their daughters to my dollars (and incidentally myself) even if I were the vilest knave or most pitiful piece of doddering antiquity—faugh! Let’s hear no more of matrimony.”