lood like that."

The waiter had put his hat into his hand; the colonel took up his
tumbler again, in which there were still a few drops of the red wine.

"God bless the youngsters," he murmured; "they have hardly left me a
drop." He looked, almost sadly, into what remained of the wine, then set
the tumbler down again without drinking.

The fat waiter became suddenly alive.

"Will the colonel, perhaps, have another glass?"

The old man, standing at the table, had opened the wine list and was
mumbling to himself.

"H'm--another sort, maybe--but one can't buy it by the glass--only by
the bottle--somewhat too much."

Slowly his gaze wandered over in my direction; I read in his eyes the
dumb inquiry a man sometimes throws his neighbor when he wants to go
halves with him over a bottle of wine.

"If the colonel will allow me," I said, "it would give me great pleasure
to drink a bottle with him."

He agreed, plainly not unwilling. He pushed the wine list over to
the waiter, lining with his finger the sort he wanted, and said in a
commanding tone: "A bottle of that."

"That is a brand I know well," he said, turning to me, while he threw
his hat on a chair and sat down at one of the tables--"it's good blood."

I had placed myself at a table with him so that I could see his face in
profile. His look was again turned toward the window, and as he gazed
past me up into the heavens, the glow of the sunset was reflected in his
eyes.

It was the first time I had seen him at such close quarters.

By the look of his eyes he was lost in dreams, and as his hand played
mechanically through his long beard, there seemed to rise before him out
of the flood of the years that had rushed behind, forms that were once
young when he was young, and which were now--who can say where? The
bottle which the waiter had brought and placed at a table before us
contained a rare wine. An old Bordeaux, brown and oily, poured into our
glasses. I recalled the expression which the old man had used a short
time before.

"I must admit, colonel, that this is indeed 'good blood.'"

His flushed eyes came slowly back from the far away, turned upon me, and
remained fixed there, as if he would say: "What do you know about it?"

He took a deep draft, wiped his beard, and gazed at his glass.
"Strange," he said, "when a man grows old--he recalls the earliest days
far easier than those that come later."

I was silent; I felt that I ought neither to speak