A load of responsibility rolled off my shoulders like Christian’s pack.  I looked at the dog football match with the interest of a Sheffield puddler at a Cup-tie, and clapped my hands.

An hour or so later after we had seen Agatha home, and Dale had incidentally chucked Lord Essendale (the phrase is his own), we were sitting over whisky and soda and cigars in my Victoria Street flat.  The ingenuousness of youth had insisted on this prolongation of our meeting.  He had a thousand things to tell me.  They chiefly consisted in a reiteration of the statement that he had been a rampant and unimagined silly ass, and that Maisie, who knew the whole lunatic story, was a brick, and a million times too good for him.  When he entered my humble lodging he looked round in a bewildered manner.

“Why on earth are you living in this mouse-trap?”

“Agatha calls it a pill-box.  I call it a bird-cage.  I live here, my dear boy, because it is the utmost I can afford.”

“Rot!  I’ve been your private secretary and know what your income is.”

I sighed heavily.  I shall have to get a leaflet printed setting out the causes that led to my change of fortune.  Then I can hand it to such of my friends as manifest surprise.

Indeed, I had grown so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune.  To Dale, however, it was fresh.  He listened to it open-eyed.  When I had concluded, he brought his hand down on the arm of the chair.

“By Jove, you’re splendid!  I always said you were.  Just splendid!”

He gulped down half a tumbler of whisky and soda to hide his feelings.

“And you’ve been doing all this while I’ve been making a howling fool of myself!  Look here, Simon, you were right all along the line—­from the very first when you tackled me about Lola.  Do you remember?”

“Why refer to it?” I asked.

“I must!” he burst in quickly.  “I’ve been longing to put myself square with you.  By the way, where is Lola?”

“I don’t know,” said I with grim truthfulness.

“Don’t know?  Has she vanished?”

“Yes,” said I.

“That’s the end of it, I suppose.  Poor Lola!  She was an awfully good sort you know!” said Dale, “and I won’t deny I was hit.  That’s when I came such a cropper.  But I realise now how right you were.  I was just caught by the senses, nothing else; and when she wrote to say it was all off between us my vanity suffered—­suffered damnably, old chap.  I lost the election through it.  Didn’t attend to business.  That brought me to my senses.  Then Essendale took me away yachting, and I had a quiet time to think; and after that I somehow took to seeing more of Maisie.  You know how things happen.  And I’m jolly grateful to you, old chap.  You’ve saved me from God knows what complications!  After all, good sort as Lola is, it’s rot for a man to go outside his own class, isn’t it?”