inscrutable Providence for your dissolution—­phew!—­and your clothes would remain standing for a surprised second, and then fall down in a heap without a particle of you inside them.  If we have to die, why doesn’t Providence employ this simple and sensible method?  It would save such a lot of trouble.  It would be so clean, so painless, so picturesque.  It would add to the interest of our walks abroad.  Fancy a stout, important policeman vanishing from his uniform—­the helmet falling over the collar, the tunic doubling in at the belt, the knees giving way, and the unheard, merry laughter of the disenuniformed spirit winging its way truncheonless into the Empyrean.

But if you think you are going to get any fun out of dying in the present inconvenient manner, you are mistaken.  Believe one who is trying.

I will remain on my feet, however, as long as my will holds out.  In this way I may continue to be of service to my fellow creatures, and procure for myself a happy lot or portion.  Even this morning I have been able to feel the throb of eumoiriety.  A piteous letter came from Latimer, and a substantial cheque lies on my table ready to be posted.  I wonder how much I have left?  So long as it is enough to pay my doctor’s bills and funeral expenses, what does it matter?

The last line of the above was written on December 21st.  It is now January 30th, and I am still alive and able to write.  I wish I weren’t.  But I will set down as plainly as I can what has happened in the interval.

I had just written the last word, seated at my hotel window in the sunshine, and enjoying, in spite of my uncheerful thoughts, the scents that rose from the garden, when I heard a knock at my door.  At my invitation to enter, Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room in a great state of excitement carrying the familiar bunch of papers.  He put his hat on the floor, pitched the papers into the hat, and ran up to me.

“My dear sir, don’t get up, I implore you.  And I won’t sit down.  I have just seen the ever beautiful and beloved lady.”

I turned my chair away from the table, and faced him as he stood blowing kisses with one little hand, while the other lay on his heart.  In a flash he struck a new gesture; he folded his arms and scowled.

“I was with her.  She was opening her inmost heart to me.  She knows I am her champion.  A servant came up announcing Monsieur Vauvenarde.  She dismissed me.  I have come to my patron and friend, the English statesman.  Her husband is with her now.”

I smiled.  “Madame Brandt told me that she had asked for an interview.”

“And you allow it?  You allow her to contaminate her beautiful presence with the sight of that traitor, that cheat at cards, that murderer, that devil?  Ah, but I will not have it!  I am her champion.  I will save her.  I will save you.  I will take you both away to Egypt, and surround you with my beautiful cats, and fan you with peacock’s feathers.”