“Those feelings you have when you stretch out your legs in the morning, and when you walk home to tea, swinging your stick, and when you go up those backstairs of old Malakite’s, and when you drink that bottle of gin of yours which I’ve heard about and forget that it isn’t your first night with your young lady, and when you enjoy those books in old Urquhart’s library and tell yourself stories about them, and when he brings out his second-best wine and you warm yourself at his fire, and when you look over gates on your walks and think that Nature is something!” He stopped breathlessly, and then added, in the dead silence that followed, “If you go about with me much longer you’ll find yourself falling into reality , like⁠ ⁠… like an abortion into the Bog-stream!”

“Jason, if you don’t shut up,” cried Darnley fiercely, “I’ll go straight off to Preston Lane with Solent and leave you alone!”

“It’s all right,” interposed Wolf. “I don’t mind hearing these things. But, if Darnley doesn’t object, I’d like to ask you one question, Otter. What is it about me that annoys you so?”