““He had a glimpse at the figure that flitted through the smoking rooms and pages of cheap fiction -a pitiable fellow in his middle age, seeking to renew his youth by taking up with a girl who was much younger ... a fatuous, garishly got up clown at whom the world laughed out of discomfort, pity, and contempt. He looked at this figure as closely as he could; but the longer he looked the less familiar it became. It was not himself that he saw, and he knew suddenly that it was no-one.””
