before it came to--what it came to; but it wouldn't
have come to that if he had got hardened to them. Possibly they had
lost their outlines, and merged into one dull general disappointment
that was too hard to bear. I wonder whether the Priest and the Levite
were smitten with remorse after they had passed on. Unfortunately, in
this instance, no good Samaritan followed.

The bottom of our long _table d'hote_ was held by a Frenchman, a
Normand, a giant, but a pallid and rather flabby giant, whose name, if
he had another than Monsieur, I never heard. He professed to be a
painter, used to sketch birds and profiles on the back of his
menu-card between the courses, wore shamelessly the multi-coloured
rosette of a foreign order in his buttonhole, and talked with a good
deal of physiognomy. I had the corner seat at his right, and was
flanked in turn by Miss Etta J. Hicks, a bouncing young person from
Chicago, beyond whom, like rabbits in a company of foxes, cowered Mr.
and Mrs. Jordan P. Hicks, two broken-spirited American parents. At
Monsieur's left, and facing me, sat Colonel Escott, very red and
cheerful; then a young man who called the Colonel Cornel, and came
from Dublin, proclaiming himself a barr'ster, and giving his name as
Flarty, though on his card it was written Flaherty; and then Sir
Richard Maistre. After him, a diminishing perspective of busy
diners--for purposes of conversation, so far as we were concerned,
inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension.

Of our immediate constellation, Sir Richard Maistre was the only
member on whom the eye was tempted to linger. The others were
obvious--simple equations, soluble 'in the head.' But he called for
slate and pencil, offered materials for doubt and speculation, though
it would not have been easy to tell wherein they lay. What displayed
itself to a cursory inspection was quite unremarkable: simply a
decent-looking young Englishman, of medium stature, with square-cut
plain features, reddish-brown hair, grey eyes, and clothes and manners
of the usual pattern. Yet, showing through this ordinary surface,
there was something cryptic. For me, at any rate, it required a
constant effort not to stare at him. I felt it from the beginning, and
I felt it to the end: a teasing curiosity, a sort of magnetism that
drew my eyes in his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it,
and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't
know what stupid motive of pride, I was