Yes--and I've seen it three times."
"The garden?"
"No---the door! And I haven't gone in!"
He leant 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.
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