It was too early for me to go to bed,
and I knew the pater would have turned in before I got back. I
sauntered down two streets, and then drove to the Club. In the card-
room I found Dick and two other fellows, one of whom was a stranger
to me. As I made the convenient fourth, we played a rubber at whist.
After this it seemed generally voted that the weather was too
fatiguing for the strain of whist, and an adjournment was made to an
open window, chairs, and drinks. I was preoccupied with my own
thoughts, and I sat listening fitfully to the other men's gossip.
Sometimes a sentence came to me; at one moment I was listening
without hearing, the next I was hearing without listening. At last
the phrase struck me--"Yes; dying horribly, like a rat of
phosphorus."
I looked across to the man sitting opposite me. He was a young
fellow, and I had gathered from to-night's conversation that he was
studying medicine.
"Who is that?" I asked, with a sort of idle curiosity.
"Oh, only a fellow in the hospital," he answered with a cigarette
between his teeth. "A paying patient. D. T., you know. I saw him
last night in the ward. Shan't see him there to-morrow night, I
expect," he added with a laugh, bringing down his rocking, tiled
chair on its four legs, and determining at last to light the
cigarette.
"You wanted to see the death, I thought," remarked Dick.
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