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18 As he spoke that same vision of face and hair and eyes floated up before him.

Castleton laughed more boisterously than ever.

"Ah! Kismet, the dear old word. Yes, I suppose it's fate that makes us do most of the things which we seem to do for no particular reason."

"Has Kismet brought you here?" Jacynth inquired. "You seem fit enough at all events."

"Fit, my dear fellow? not at all."

It was one of Castleton's little jocularities with life to consider himself likely at any moment to become a confirmed invalid. "I was up in Bagdad, and I picked up an English paper which said that Harrogate was looking lovely, and somehow I felt homesick and seedy, and all that sort of thing, so I just cut the East and came slap on here."

"Do you know," said Jacynth gravely, "that there are moments when I feel much more inclined to cut the West and go, as you say, 'slap on' to some sleepy Eastern place—Bagdad perhaps, or Japan—and dream away the rest of my life."

"The rest of your life? You talk as if you were ninety!" And Castleton slapped his fat little leg merrily.

"Don't you know what the man-at-arms says in Thackeray's ballad?" Jacynth replied. Wait till you come to forty year.' Well, I have come to forty year, pretty nearly. I was thirty-nine