The Londoners by Robert Hichens

Mr. Rodney's condition of mind during, and for some time after, his drive from Mrs. Verulam's door in the black-and-green cab would scarcely afford fit subject for minute description. When a thoroughly estimable man ceases to take an interest in his "little place in the country," forgets whether he has put on the same pair of lavender gloves on two successive evenings or not, is careless about the set of his white tie, and totally unaware that his hair is unevenly parted when he is setting forth to the "crush" of a Countess, analysis should hold its merciless hand, psychology should veil its piercing eye. Suffice it, then, to say that Mr. Rodney was indeed sore smitten and afflicted by the terrible revelation of Mrs. Verulam's maniacal determination. To a man of his nature, life is society and society is life; the mode is to him what the burning bush was to Moses; the fashion of the day is the god in the car under whose wheels he loves to lie. Men, women, sorrows, joys, all people, all things, are but food for the sustenance of the deity whose rouged and powdered face looks down, like Jezebel's, from the lattices of a meretricious heaven, intent only on gaining an empty compliment, or a sly _œillade_ from the worshipping world below. The thought that a woman who was not only in the fashion, but literally the fashion, a woman with whom he was in love, should suddenly fall under an influence with a ridiculous name, hobnailed boots, and no club, rendered him almost imbecile with impotent agitation; and it is on record that he was seen in the late afternoon of the day of Mrs. Verulam's appalling deliverance furiously pacing the Thames Embankment, and that at night he -- how was never known -- in some manner made his way to Clapham Common, upon which preposterous portion of the earth he wandered alone for nearly an hour and a half, uttering exclamations of despair, and making crude and tragic gestures.

Such deeds as these sufficiently proclaim the extraordinary condition to which he was reduced. But there was more to come. Three days later he departed to Mitching Dean, in the very top of the season, and he might perhaps have been there at this moment, forgotten and clean gone out of recollection, had not a violent telegram from Mr. Lite, the Bun Emperor, summoned him back to town. The telegram ran as follows: