His thoughts flew back to that last scene, but twenty-four hours ago, when they had parted for ever.  As he had entered the hall he had half wondered to himself if there could be anybody in the world that day happier than himself.  Tall, well-connected, a vice-president of the Tariff Reform League, and engaged to the sweetest girl in England, he had been the envy of all.  Little did he think that that very night he was to receive his conge!  What mattered it now how or why they had quarrelled?  A few hasty words, a bitter taunt, tears, and then the end.

A last cry from her—­“Go, and let me never see your face again!”

A last sneer from him—­“I will go, but first give me back the presents I have promised you!”

Then a slammed door and—­silence.

What use, without her guidance, to try to keep straight any more?  Bereft of her love, Robert had sunk steadily.  Gambling, drink, morphia, billiards and cigars—­he had taken to them all; until now in the wretched figure of the outcast on the Embankment you would never have recognized the once spruce figure of Handsome Hardrow.

[Editor.  It all seems to have happened rather rapidly, does it not?  Twenty-four hours ago he had been—­author.  You forget that this is short story.]

Handsome Hardow!  How absurd it sounded now!  He had let his beard grow, his clothes were in rags, a scar over one eye testified—­

[Editor.  Yes, yes.  Of course, I quite admit that a man might go to the bad in twenty-four hours, but would his beard grow as—­author.  Look here, you’ve heard of a man going grey with trouble in a single night, haven’t you?

Editor.  Certainly.

Author.  Well, it’s the same idea as that.

Editor.  Ah, quite so, quite so.

Author.  Where was I?

Editor.  A scar over one eye was just testifying—­I suppose he had two eyes in the ordinary way?]

—–­testified to a drunken frolic of an hour or two ago.  Never before, thought the policeman, as he passed upon his beat, had such a pitiful figure cowered upon the Embankment, and prayed for the night to cover him.

The—­

He was—­

Er—­the—­

[Editor.  Yes?

Author.  To tell the truth I am rather stuck for the moment.

Editor.  What is the trouble?

Author.  I don’t quite know what to do with Robert for ten hours or so.

Editor.  Couldn’t he go somewhere by a local line?

Author.  This is not a humorous story.  The point is that I want him to be outside a certain house some twenty miles from town at eight o’clock that evening.

Editor.  If I were Robert I should certainly start at once.

Author.  No, I have it.]

As he sat there, his thoughts flew over the bridge of years, and he was wafted on the wings of memory to other and happier Yuletides.  That Christmas when he had received his first bicycle....