He was a cheerful lad.
He talked of musical shows and film stars; and he read the paper for the football results and the boxing news.
Then he was put to bed and Ashenden saw him no more.
His relations were sent for and in two months he was dead.
He died uncomplaining.
He understood what was happening to him as little as an animal.
For a day or two there was the same malaise in the sanatorium as there is in a prison when a man has been hanged; and then, as though by universal consent, in obedience to an instinct of self-preservation, the boy was put out of mind: life, with its three meals a day, its golf on the miniature course, its regulated exercise, its prescribed rests, its quarrels and jealousies, its scandal-mongering and petty vexations, went on as before.
Campbell, to the exasperation of McLeod, continued to play the prize-song and 'Annie Laurie' on his fiddle. McLeod continued to boast of his bridge and gossip about other people's health and morals.
Miss Atkin continued to backbite.
Henry Chester continued to complain that the doctors gave him insufficient attention and railed against fate because, after the model life he had led, it had played him such a dirty trick.
Ashenden continued to read, and with amused tolerance to watch the vagaries of his fellow-creatures.
He became intimate with Major Templeton.
Templeton was perhaps a little more than forty years of age. He had been in the Grenadier Guards, but had resigned his commission after the war.
A man of ample means, he had since then devoted himself entirely to pleasure.
He raced in the racing season, shot in the shooting season and hunted in the hunting season.
When this was over he went to Monte Carlo.
He told Ashenden of the large sums he had made and lost at baccarat.
He was very fond of women and if his stories could be believed they were very fond of him.
He loved good food and good drink.
He knew by their first names the head waiters of every restaurant in London where you ate well.
He belonged to half a dozen clubs.
He had led for years a useless, selfish, worthless life, the sort of life which maybe it will be impossible for anyone to live in the future, but he had lived it without misgiving and had enjoyed it.
Ashenden asked him once what he would do if he had his time over again and he answered that he would do exactly what he had done.
He was an amusing talker, gay and pleasantly ironic, and he dealt with the surface of things, which was all he knew, with a light, easy and assured touch.
He always had a pleasant word for the dowdy spinsters in the sanatorium and a joking one for the peppery old gentlemen, for he combined good manners with a natural kindliness.
He knew his way about the superficial world of the people who have more money than they know what to do with as well as he knew his way about Mayfair.
He was the kind of man who would always have been willing to take a bet, to help a friend and to give a tenner to a rogue.
If he had never done much good in the world he had never done much harm.
He amounted to nothing.
But he was a more agreeable companion than many of more sterling character and of more admirable qualities.
He was very ill now.
He was dying and he knew it.
He took it with the same easy, laughing nonchalance as he had taken all the rest.
He'd had a thundering good time, he regretted nothing, it was rotten tough luck getting TB, but to hell with it, no one can live for ever, and when you came to think of it, he might have been killed in the war or broken his bloody neck in a point-to-point.
His principle all through life had been, when you've made a bad bet, pay up and forget about it.
He'd had a good run for his money and he was ready to call it a day.
It had been a damned good party while it lasted, but every party's got to come to an end, and next day it doesn't matter much if you went home with the milk or if you left while the fun was in full swing.
Of all those people in the sanatorium he was probably from the moral standpoint the least worthy, but he was the only one who genuinely accepted the inevitable with unconcern.
He snapped his fingers in the face of death, and you could choose whether to call his levity unbecoming or his insouciance gallant.
The last thing that ever occurred to him when he came to the sanatorium was that he might fall more deeply in love there than he had ever done before.
His amours had been numerous, but they had been light; he had been content with the politely mercenary love of chorus girls and with ephemeral unions with women of easy virtue whom he met at house parties.
He had always taken care to avoid any attachment that might endanger his freedom.
His only aim in life had been to get as much fun out of it as possible, and where sex was concerned he found every advantage and no inconvenience in ceaseless variety.
But he liked women.
Even when they were quite old he could not talk to them without a caress in his eyes and a tenderness in his voice.
He was prepared to do anything to please them.
They were conscious of his interest in them and were agreeably flattered, and they felt, quite mistakenly, that they could trust him never to let them down.
He once said a thing that Ashenden thought showed insight.
'You know, any man can get any woman he wants if he tries hard enough, there's nothing in that, but once he's got her, only a man who thinks the world of women can get rid of her without humiliating her.'
It was simply from habit that he began to make love to Ivy Bishop.