I put down my untasted glass. A cold shiver went over me. Then I began to perspire. My feeling was one of the acutest misery. My first impulse, in spite of the woodcock, was to wish that I was dead. In that brilliantly-lighted room, with all the people about me, I was afraid. Perkins was at my side. He had his back to me, for some cause or other, at the moment. All at once he faced round to me, with quite a little twirl. To be frank it was not the kind of movement which was becoming to Perkins. One of his great charms is that he never evinces what I consider indecorous signs of haste. Of an actual twirl, as if he had been a sort of human teetotum [spinning top], I do not think that he had ever been guilty before.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
I have no doubt that I looked at him with what we
