Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Lucius thought much of his friend after that frank confession at the Cosmopolitan. Geoffrey had dined none the less well because of his passion. He had eaten oysters, and bisque soup, and stewed calves' head with truffles, and mutton, and wild duck, with the appetite that had been educated in an American pine-forest; had drunk Château d'Yquem, and Chambertin, and wound up with curacoa, and had waxed merry to riotousness as the evening grew late,-Lucius taking but a moderate share in the revel, yet enjoying it. Was it not a glimpse of a new life, after the Shadrack-road, where pleasure had a universal flavour of gin-and-water?

They parted after midnight with warm protestations of friendship. They were to see each other again. Geoffrey was to look his friend up in the Shadrack district as soon as his engagements permitted. But wherever _she_ went, he would follow her, were it to that possible continent or archipelago at the southern pole.