“Er—­going to be in this afternoon?” I asked.  “I’m off for a run and I might drop in for a cup of tea about five o’clock.”

“Oh, will you, sir!” he exclaimed with pleasure.  “We shall be delighted.  Mine is the house at the crossroads—­with the red roof.”

“Well,” said I, “you may see me—­but don’t keep your tea waiting.”

As I shot uptown in my car I had almost the feeling of a coming adventure.  Hastings was a good sort!  I respected him for his bluntness of speech.  At the cigar counter in the club I replenished my case.

Then I went into the reception room, where I found a bunch of acquaintances sitting round the window.  They hailed me boisterously.  What would I have to drink?  I ordered a “Hannah Elias” and sank into a chair.  One of them was telling about the newest scandal in the divorce line:  The president of one of our largest trust companies had been discovered to have been leading a double life—­running an apartment on the West Side for a haggard and passee showgirl.

“You just tell me—­I’d like to know—­why a fellow like that makes such a damned fool of himself!  Salary of fifty thousand dollars a year!  Big house; high-class wife and family; yacht—­everything anybody wants.  Not a drinking man either.  It defeats me!” he said.

None of the group seemed able to suggest an answer.  I had just tossed off my “Hannah Elias.”

“I think I know,” I hazarded meditatively.  They turned with one accord and stared at me.  “There was nothing else for him to do,” I continued, “except to blow his brains out.”

The raconteur grunted.

“I don’t just know the meaning of that!” he remarked.  “I thought he was a friend of yours!”

“Oh, I like him well enough,” I answered, getting up.  “Thanks for the drink.  I’ve got to be getting home.  My wife is giving a little luncheon to thirty valuable members of society.”

I was delayed on Fifth Avenue and when the butler opened the front door the luncheon party was already seated at the table.  A confused din emanated from behind the portieres of the dining room, punctuated by shouts of female laughter.  The idea of going in and overloading my stomach for an hour, while strenuously attempting to produce light conversation, sickened me.  I shook my head.

“Just tell your mistress that I’ve been suddenly called away on business,” I directed the butler and climbed back into my motor.

“Up the river!” I said to my chauffeur.

We spun up the Riverside Drive, past rows of rococo apartment houses, along the Lafayette Boulevard and through Yonkers.  It was a glorious autumn day.  The Palisades shone red and yellow with turning foliage.  There was a fresh breeze down the river and a thousand whitecaps gleamed in the sunlight.  Overhead great white clouds moved majestically athwart the blue.  But I took no pleasure in it all.  I was suffering from an acute mental and physical depression.  Like Hamlet I had lost all my mirth—­whatever I ever had—­and the clouds seemed but a “pestilent congregation of vapors.”  I sat in a sort of trance as I was whirled farther and farther away from the city.