inner in silence. After all, he was beginning
to fear that he had made a mistake. Lovell had somehow contrived to
impart a subtly tragic note to his story, but the outcome of it all
seemed to assume a more sordid aspect. These two would meet, there
would be recriminations, a tragic appeal for forgiveness, possibly some
melodramatic attempt at vengeance. The glamour of the affair seemed to
him to be fading away, now that he had come into actual contact with
it. It was not until he began to study his companion during a somewhat
prolonged silence that he felt the reaction. It was then that he began
to see new things, that he felt the enthusiasm kindled by Lovell's
strangely told story begin to revive. It was not the watching for events
more or less commonplace which would repay him for the step he had
taken; it was the study of this man, placed in so strange a position,--a
man come back to life, after years of absolute isolation. He had broken
away from the chain which links together men of similar tastes and
occupations, and which goes to the creation of type. He was in a unique
position! He was in the world, but not of it. He was groping about
amongst familiar scenes, over which time had thrown the pall of
unfamiliarity. What manner of place would he find--what manner of
place did he desire to find? It was here that the real interest of the
situation culminated. At least, so Aynesworth thought then.

They were dining at a restaurant in the Strand, which Aynesworth had
selected as representing one, the more wealthy, type of Bohemian life.
The dinner and wine had been of his choosing. Wingrave had stipulated
only for the best. Wingrave himself had eaten very little, the bottle
of wine stood half empty between them. The atmosphere of the place, the
effect of the wine, the delicate food, and the music, were visible to a
greater or less degree, according to temperament, amongst all the other
little groups of men and women by whom they were surrounded. Wingrave
alone remained unaffected. He was carefully and correctly dressed in
clothes borrowed from his new tailor, and he showed not the slightest
signs of strangeness or gaucherie amongst his unfamiliar surroundings.
He looked about him always, with the cold, easy nonchalance of the man
of the world. Of being recognized he had not the slightest fear. His
frame and bearing, and the brightness of his deep, strong eyes, still
belonged to early middle age, but his face itself, worn