So that ended
that stage of my discomfiture.
It was only to give place to a worse. Was all. this accident or fell
design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason
had I to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of
an abyss; sooner or later the false step must come and the pit
swallow us. I began to wish myself back in London, and I did get
back to my room in our old house. My dancing days were already over;
there I had taken the one resolution to which I remained as true as
better men to better vows; there the painful association was no
mere sense of personal unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room
of other dances ... and was still smoking the cigarette which
Raffles had taught me to appreciate when I looked up to find him
regarding me from the door. He had opened it as noiselessly as only
Raffles could open doors, and now he closed it in the same
professional fashion.
"I missed Achilles hours ago," said he. "And still he's sulking in
his tent!"
"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could always make me, "but
I'll chuck it if you'll stop and smoke.
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