Poor Denton! He had already booked his
passage for Africa, and spent hours looking in the atlas for good
deserts.
In every fever of human affairs there comes at last the crisis. We may
emerge from it healed or we may plunge into still deeper depths of
soul-sickness; but always the crisis comes. I was privileged to be
present when it came in the affairs of Mortimer Sturgis and Betty
Weston.
I had gone into the club-house one afternoon at an hour when it is
usually empty, and the first thing I saw, as I entered the main room,
which looks out on the ninth green, was Mortimer. He was grovelling on
the floor, and I confess that, when I caught sight of him, my heart
stood still. I feared that his reason, sapped by dissipation, had given
way. I knew that for weeks, day in and day out, the niblick had hardly
ever been out of his hand, and no constitution can stand that.
He looked up as he heard my footstep.
"Hallo," he said. "Can you see a ball anywhere?"
"A ball?" I backed away, reaching for the door-handle. "My dear boy," I
said, soothingly, "you have made a mistake.
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