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He leaned over the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his
voice as he spoke. "Thrice I have had my chance--THRICE!
If ever that door offers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in
out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out
of these toilsome futilities. I will go and never return. This
time I will stay . . . . . I swore it and when the time came--
I DIDN'T GO.
"Three times in one year have I passed that door and failed to
enter. Three times in the last year.
"The first time was on the night of the snatch division on the
Tenants' Redemption Bill, on which the Government was saved by a
majority of three. You remember? No one on our side--perhaps very
few on the opposite side--expected the end that night. Then the
debate collapsed like eggshells. I and Hotchkiss were dining with
his cousin at Brentford, we were both unpaired, and we were called
up by telephone, and set off at once in his cousin's motor. We got
in barely in time, and on the way we passed my wall and door--livid
in the moonlight, blotched with hot yellow as the glare of our
lamps lit it, but unmistakable. 'My God!' cried I. 'What?'said
Hotchkiss. 'Nothing!' I answered, and the moment passed.
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