that in the old days people who went on like this were on the way of becoming hermits in a wilderness.
"Hermits be hanged!" he commented with engaging impulsiveness. Of course he didn't mind a wilderness.
. . . I was glad of it, I said. That was where he would be going to. He would find it lively enough, I
ventured to promise. "Yes, yes," he said, keenly. He had shown a desire, I continued inflexibly, to go
out and shut the door after him. . . . "Did I?" he interrupted in a strange access of gloom that seemed
to envelop him from head to foot like the shadow of a passing cloud. He was wonderfully expressive
after all. Wonderfully! "Did I?" he repeated, bitterly. "You can't say I made much noise about it. And I
can keep it up, too--only, confound it! you show me a door." . . . "Very well. Pass on," I struck in. I could
make him a solemn promise that it would be shut behind him with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it
was, would be ignored, because the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe for interference.
Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as though he had never existed. He would have nothing
but the soles of his two feet to stand upon, and he would have first to find his ground at that. "Never
existed--that's it, by Jove!" he murmured to himself. His eyes, fastened upon my lips, sparkled. If he
had thoroughly understood the conditions, I concluded, he had better jump into the first gharry he could
see and drive on to Stein's house for his final instructions. He flung out of the room before I had fairly
finished speaking.'