“If I may say it,” said I, after a time, “you have saved my life.”

“Chance,” he answered. “Just chance.”

“I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.”

“Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowledge; and I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was bored and wanted something to do. If I’d been jaded that day, or hadn’t liked your face, well⁠—it’s a curious question where you would have been now!”

This damped my mood a little. “At any rate,” I began.

“It’s a chance, I tell you,” he interrupted, “as everything is in a man’s life. Only the asses won’t see it! Why am I here now, an outcast from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying all the pleasures of London ? Simply because eleven years ago⁠—I lost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night.”