He had allowed me to walk backwards and forwards on the hearthrug before a blazing fire, pouring out the wealth of my wisdom, experience, and rhetoric for ten minutes by the clock, and then coolly informed me that I was talking through my hat.

I wiped my forehead, sat down, and looked at him across the table in surprise and indignation.

“If you can point out one irrelevant or absurd remark in my homily, I’ll eat the hat through which you say I’m talking.”

“The whole thing is rot from beginning to end!” said he.  “None of you good people know anything at all about Lola Brandt.  She’s not the sort of woman you think.  She’s quite different.  You can’t judge her by ordinary standards.  There’s not a woman like her in the wide world!”

I made a gesture of discouragement.  The same old parable of the wise had evoked the same old retort from the deluded young.  She was quite different from other women.  She was misunderstood by the cynical and gross-minded world.  A heart of virgin purity beat beneath her mercenary bosom.  Her lurid past had been the reiterated martyrdom of a noble nature.  O Golden Age!  O unutterable silliness of Boyhood!

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t talk in that way!” he cried (I had been talking in that way), and he rose and walked like a young tiger about the room.  “I can’t stand it.  I’ve gone mad about her.  She has got into my blood somehow.  I think about her all day long, and I can’t sleep at night.  I would give up any mortal thing on earth for her.  She is the one woman in the world for me!  She’s the dearest, sweetest, tenderest, most beautiful creature God ever made!”

“And you honour and respect her—­just as you would honour and respect Maisie?” I asked quietly.

“Of course I do!” he flashed.  “Don’t I tell you that you know nothing whatever about her?  She is the dearest, sweetest——­” etc., etc.  And he continued to trumpet forth the Olympian qualities of the Syren and his own fervent adoration.  I was the only being to whom he had opened his heart, and, the floodgates being set free, the torrent burst forth in this tempestuous and incoherent manner.  I let him go on, for I thought it did him good; but his rhapsody added very little to my information.

The lady who had “houp-la’d” her way from Dublin to Yokohama was the spotless queen of beauty, and Dale was frenziedly, idiotically in love with her.  That was all I could gather.  When he had finished, which he did somewhat abruptly, he threw himself into a chair and took out his cigarette-case with shaky fingers.

“There.  I suppose I’ve made a damn-fool exhibition of myself,” he said, defiantly.  “What have you got to say about it?”

“Precisely,” I replied, “what I said before.  I’ll repeat it, if you like.”

Indeed, what more was there to say for the present about the lunatic business?  I had come to the end of my arguments.