Stephen Leacock

Further Foolishness Stephen Leacock

Book Excerpt: ...sits there with clenched hands, the dust and ashes of a broken marriage and a loveless life, and the knowledge, too late, of all that might have been. And it is to this hotel that The Woman's Husband is following her. But The Man does not know that she is in the hotel, nor that she has left her husband; it is only accident that brings them together. And it is only by accident that he has come into her room, at night, and stands there--rooted to the threshold. Now as a matter of fact, in real life, there is nothing at all in the simple fact of walking into the wrong room of an hotel by accident. You merely apologise and go out. I had this experience myself only a few days ago. I walked right into a lady's room--next door to my own. But I simply said, "Oh, I beg your pardon, I thought this was No. 343.""No," she said, "this is 341."She did not rise and "confront" me, as they always do in the snoopopathic stories. Neither did her eyes flash, nor her gown cling to her as she rose. Nor was her gown...