,
understanding, strong.

They greeted one another, and then they moved forward and spoke to Lady
Adela and Brun.

Arkwright watched them. There they all were, gathered together under the
sharp eyes of the Duchess, and she seemed, so Arkwright fancied, to hold
them with her gaze. Little Brun was neater than ever, and Lady Adela
drier than ever by the side of the stranger. They talked; they were
discussing the picture--their eyes travelled up to it, and for an
instant there was silence as though they were all charging it with their
challenge or surrender, as the case might be. The girl's eyes moved up
to it with a sudden sharpened, thinning of the face that brought back
the gleam of hostility that it had worn before. Then her eyes fell, and,
with a smile, they sought her friend.

Arkwright did not know any reason for his interest, but he watched them
breathlessly, and the sense that he had had, on first entering the room,
of being on the verge of some new experience, deepened with him.

Brun was apparently suddenly conscious that he had left his friend alone
long enough, for he detached himself from the group, shook hands with
Lady Adela and the girl, bowed stiffly to the man and joined Arkwright.

"Seen enough?" he said.

"Yes," said Arkwright.

They went out together.

IV

Felix Brun and Arkwright were not intimate friends. No one was intimate
with Brun, and the little man came and disappeared, was there and was
not there, was absent for a year, and then back again as though he had
been away a week, was, indeed, simply a succession of explanatory
footnotes to the social history of Europe.

It was for the social history of Europe that he lived, for the eager
penetrating gaze into this capital and that, something suddenly noted,
some case examined and dismissed. Life is discovered most accurately by
those who learn to watch for its accidents rather than its intentions,
and it was always the things that occurred by change that gave Brun his
discoveries. He was a cosmopolitan of a multitude of acquaintances, no
friends, no occupation, an enthusiasm only for cynical and pessimistic
observation, invaluable as a commentator, useless as a human being.

When, as was now the case, some chance meeting had assisted his theories
his neat little body shone like a celluloid ball. If, having made his
discovery, he might also have his audience to whom he might declare it,
then his very fingers quivered with the exciteme