At Love's Cost w/ Direct link technology (A Romantic Story)

"Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my senses. I ask myself why I should commit such lurid folly. Last night I was sitting over the fire with a book--for it was cold, though not so cold as this," the speaker shivered and dragged the collar of his overcoat still higher--"at peace with all the world, with Omar purring placidly by my side, and my soul wrapped in that serenity which belongs to a man who has long since rid himself of that inconvenient appendage--a conscience, and has hit upon the right brand of cigarettes, and now--"