"Come to Sherry's," he urged again, halting in the ecstatic working of his mind, "and I promise you that we will make an evening." But the sly incarnate devil which lurked in Adams in the form of an ironic spirit asserted itself with an explosion which shook the plethoric gravity with which Perry contemplated an orgy of indigestion.
The universal scheme appeared planned to fulfil the law of a Titanic humour, and his own credulity and Connie's indiscretions showed suddenly to Adams as mere mote-like jests which circled in a general convulsion of Nature's irony.
"Well, you are a capital fellow," he stammered, after a moment, while the spasm of his unholy laughter rocked him from head to foot.

"I--I'd like it of all things--but I can't.

The fact is it is all so funny--the whole business of life." Even as he uttered the words he realised that to Perry they would convey an infamous lightness, but at the thought his hysterical humour redoubled in its energy.

It was as if he stood outside--afar off--and watched as a god the little tangled eccentricities of earth.

And they _were_ little, even though Perry should continue to regard the situation with such large magnificence.
By the time, however, that he had parted from Perry Bridewell and turned in at his own door, the gravity of the occasion had grown almost oppressive in his reflections.