"My dear Simon, you are talking through your hat!"

He had allowed me to walk backwards and forwards on the hearthrug before
a blazing fire, pouring out the wealth of my wisdom, experience, and
rhetoric for ten minutes by the clock, and then coolly informed me that
I was talking through my hat.

I wiped my forehead, sat down, and looked at him across the table in
surprise and indignation.

"If you can point out one irrelevant or absurd remark in my homily, I'll
eat the hat through which you say I'm talking."

"The whole thing is rot from beginning to end!" said he. "None of you
good people know anything at all about Lola Brandt. She's not the
sort of woman you think. She's quite different. You can't judge her by
ordinary standards. There's not a woman like her in the wide world!"

I made a gesture of discouragement. The same old parable of the wise
had evoked the same old retort from the deluded young. She was quite
different from other women. She was misunderstood by the cynical and
gross-minded world. A heart of virgin purity beat beneath her mercenary
bosom. Her lurid past had been the reiterated martyrdom of a noble
nature. O Golden Age! O unutterable silliness of Boyhood!

"For Heaven's sake, don't talk in that way!" he cried (I had been
talking in that way), and he rose and walked like a young tiger about
the room. "I can't stand it. I've gone mad about her. She has got into
my blood somehow. I think about her all day long, and I can't sleep at
night. I would give up any mortal thing on earth for her. She is the one