A fortnight later, having remained myself for the whole of the intervening time, I was happy to receive Utterson and a number of other friends of mine to dinner. The food was good and the conversation convivial. It buoyed my spirit in a way that I had quite forgotten. Most of my pleasure in recent times had been channelled through Hyde, and it made for a very pleasant change to have a simple conversation with men of a like mind, rather than the kind of things that he liked to get involved in.

I bade farewell to the others as they grew tired, but was able to contrive that Utterson would be left alone with me at the end of the night. We talked of inconsequential matters for a time, with the bottle of port at our elbows and the fire facing us. However, I knew that Utterson would have matters on his mind that he would want to broach. I had managed to postpone this conversation two weeks earlier, but it was inevitable that it would happen.