the
youngest person in the room. That quiet Monsieur Mills intimidated me a
little by his age (I suppose he was thirty-five), his massive
tranquillity, his clear, watchful eyes. But the temptation was too
great--and I addressed him impulsively on the subject of that shipwreck.

He turned his big fair face towards me with surprise in his keen glance,
which (as though he had seen through me in an instant and found nothing
objectionable) changed subtly into friendliness. On the matter of the
shipwreck he did not say much. He only told me that it had not occurred
in the Mediterranean, but on the other side of Southern France--in the
Bay of Biscay. "But this is hardly the place to enter on a story of that
kind," he observed, looking round at the room with a faint smile as
attractive as the rest of his rustic but well-bred personality.

I expressed my regret. I should have liked to hear all about it. To
this he said that it was not a secret and that perhaps next time we
met. . .

"But where can we meet?" I cried. "I don't come often to this house, you
know."

"Where? Why on the Cannebiere to be sure. Everybody meets everybody
else at least once a day on the pavement opposite the _Bourse_."

This was absolutely true. But though I looked for him on each succeeding
day he was nowhere to be seen at the usual times. The companions of my
idle hours (and all my hours were idle just then) noticed my
preoccupation and chaffed me about it in a rather obvious way. They
wanted to know whether she, whom I expected to see, was dark or fair;
whether that fascination which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was
one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a
footing in both these--shall we say circles? As to themselves they were
the bohemian circle, not very wide--half a dozen of us led by a sculptor
whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name was "Young Ulysses."

I liked it.

But chaff or no chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them
for the burly and sympathetic Mills. I was ready to drop any easy
company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental
deference. It was not precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted
and interested me the more because he was not to be seen. The fear that
he might have departed suddenly for England--(or for Spain)--caused me a
sort of ridiculous depression as though I had missed a unique
opportunity. And it was a