it kept me awake in bed, and that, again, made me wonder how William’s wife was.  Next day I went to the club early (which was not my custom) to see the new books.  Being in the club at any rate, I looked into the dining-room to ask William if I had left my gloves there, and the sight of him reminded me of his wife; so I asked for her.  He shook his head mournfully, and I went off in a rage.

So accustomed am I to the club that when I dine elsewhere I feel uncomfortable next morning, as if I had missed a dinner.  William knew this; yet here he was, hounding me out of the club!  That evening I dined (as the saying is) at a restaurant, where no sauce was served with the asparagus.  Furthermore, as if that were not triumph enough for William, his doleful face came between me and every dish, and I seemed to see his wife dying to annoy me.

I dined next day at the club for self-preservation, taking, however, a table in the middle of the room, and engaging a waiter who had once nearly poisoned me by not interfering when I put two lumps of sugar into my coffee instead of one, which is my allowance.  But no William came to me to acknowledge his humiliation, and by-and-by I became aware that he was not in the room.  Suddenly the thought struck me that his wife must be dead, and I—­It was the worst cooked and the worst served dinner I ever had in the club.

I tried the smoking-room.  Usually the talk there is entertaining, but on that occasion it was so frivolous that I did not remain five minutes.  In the card-room a member told me excitedly that a policeman had spoken rudely to him; and my strange comment was: 

“After all, it is a small matter.”

In the library, where I had not been for years, I found two members asleep, and, to my surprise, William on a ladder dusting books.

“You have not heard, sir?” he said, in answer to my raised eyebrows.  Descending the ladder, he whispered tragically:  “It was last evening, sir.  I—­I lost my head, and I—­swore at a member.”

I stepped back from William, and glanced apprehensively at the two members.  They still slept.

“I hardly knew,” William went on, “what I was doing all day yesterday, for I had left my wife so weakly that—­”

I stamped my foot.

“I beg your pardon for speaking of her,” he had the grace to say, “but I couldn’t help slipping up to the window often yesterday to look for Jenny, and when she did come, and I saw she was crying, it—­it sort of confused me, and I didn’t know right, sir, what I was doing.  I hit against a member, Mr. Myddleton Finch, and he—­he jumped and swore at me.  Well, sir, I had just touched him after all, and I was so miserable, it a kind of stung me to be treated like—­like that, and me a man as well as him; and I lost my senses, and—­and I swore back.”

William’s shamed head sank on his chest, but I even let pass his insolence in likening himself to a member of the club, so afraid was I of the sleepers waking and detecting me in talk with a waiter.