Devil's Dice by William le Queux

Idle memory shortens life, or shortens the sense of life, by linking the immediate past clingingly to the present. In this may be found one of the reasons for the length of time in our juvenile days and the brevity of the time that succeeds. The child forgets, habitually, gayly, and constantly. Would that I had never acquired the habit of recall!

Jack, in a well-worn velvet lounge coat, was seated at his writing-table absorbed in his work when I entered, a couple of hours after I had left Mabel. His small den, lined with books, contained but little furniture beyond the big oak writing-table in the window, a heavy old-fashioned horse-hair couch, and several easy chairs. Littered with newspapers, books, magazines, and those minor worries of an author's life, press-cuttings, the apartment was nevertheless snug, the bright fire and the green-shaded reading lamp giving it a cosy appearance.