table in the Buffet. I was sorry, for my
soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely
and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but
incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the
stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy
hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick
stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed the unpalatable
coffee. Cold and hungry though I was, one sip of this coffee was one
sip too much for me. I would not mortify my body by drinking more of
it, although I had to mortify my soul by lingering over it till one of
the harassed waiters would pause to be paid for it. I was somewhat
comforted by the aspect of my fellow-travellers at the surrounding
tables. Dank, dishevelled, dismal, they seemed to be resenting as much
as I the return to the dear home-land. I suppose it was the contrast
between them and him that made me stare so hard at the large young man
who was standing on the threshold and surveying the scene.

He looked, as himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle,'
or 'right as rain.' His cheeks were rosy, his eyes sparkling. He had
his arms akimbo, and his feet planted wide apart. His grey bowler
rested on the back of his head, to display a sleek coating of hair
plastered down over his brow. In his white satin tie shone a dubious
but large diamond, and there was the counter-attraction of geraniums
and maidenhair fern in his button-hole. So fresh was the nosegay that
he must have kept it in water during the passage! Or perhaps these
vegetables had absorbed by mere contact with his tweeds, the subtle
secret of his own immarcescibility. I remembered now that I had seen
him, without realising him, on the platform of the Gare du Nord. 'Gay
Paree' was still written all over him. But evidently he was no repiner.

Unaccountable though he was, I had no suspicion of what he was about to
do. I think you will hardly believe me when I tell you what he did. 'A
traveller's tale' you will say, with a shrug. Yet I swear to you that
it is the plain and solemn truth. If you still doubt me, you have the
excuse that I myself hardly believed the evidence of my eyes. In the
Buffet of Dover Harbour, in the cold grey dawn, in the brief interval
between boat and train, the large young man, shooting his cuffs, strode
forward, struck a confidential attitude across the counter, and began
to