I had told him little or nothing of my fears.

Ever since I learned that Adrian was putting the finishing touches to his novel, I had dismissed them from my mind.

Such accounts as I had given of Adrian had been in a jocularly satirical vein.

I had mentioned his pontifical attitude, the magnification of his office, his bombastic rhetoric over the Higher Life and the Inspiration of the Snows, and, all that being part and parcel of our old Adrian, we had laughed.

Six months before I would have told Jaffery quite a different story.