“Dead, Mr. Holmes, dead! He was attaché at Rome, and he died there of pneumonia last month.”

“I am sorry. One could not connect death with such a man. I have never known anyone so vitally alive. He lived intensely⁠—every fibre of him!”

“Too intensely, Mr. Holmes. That was the ruin of him. You remember him as he was⁠—debonair and splendid. You did not see the moody, morose, brooding creature into which he developed. His heart was broken. In a single month I seemed to see my gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man.”

“A love affair⁠—a woman?”

“Or a fiend. Well, it was not to talk of my poor lad that I asked you to come, Mr. Holmes.”