skin.
The only positive colour which relieved the half tints of the face lay
in the sharp bright eyes which gleamed beneath the busy eyebrows like
tiny patches of vivid blue sky seen through little rifts in a curtain of
cloud. All expression, all mobility, all life were concentrated in those
two points.

The Wanderer rose to his feet.

"Keyork Arabian!" he exclaimed, extending his hand. The little man
immediately gripped it in his small fingers, which, soft and delicately
made as they were, possessed a strength hardly to have been expected
either from their shape, or from the small proportions of him to whom
they belonged.

"Still wandering?" asked the little man, with a slightly sarcastic
intonation. He spoke in a deep, caressing bass, not loud, but rich in
quality and free from that jarring harshness which often belongs to very
manly voices. A musician would have discovered that the pitch was that
of those Russian choristers whose deep throats yield organ tones, a full
octave below the compass of ordinary singers in other lands.

"You must have wandered, too, since we last met," replied the taller
man.

"I never wander," said Keyork. "When a man knows what he wants,
knows where it is to be found, and goes thither to take it, he is not
wandering. Moreover, I have no thought of removing myself or my goods
from Prague. I live here. It is a city for old men. It is saturnine. The
foundations of its houses rest on the silurian formation, which is more
than can be said for any other capital, as far as I know."

"Is that an advantage?" inquired the Wanderer.

"To my mind. I would say to my son, if I had one--my thanks to a blind
but intelligent destiny for preserving me from such a calamity!--I would
say to him, 'Spend thy youth among flowers in the land where they are
brightest and sweetest; pass thy manhood in all lands where man strives
with man, thought for thought, blow for blow; choose for thine old age
that spot in which, all things being old, thou mayest for the longest
time consider thyself young in comparison with thy surroundings.' A man
can never feel old if he contemplates and meditates upon those
things only which are immeasurably older than himself. Moreover the
imperishable can preserve the perishable."

"It was not your habit to talk of death when we were together."

"I have found it interesting of late years. The subject is connected
with one of my inventions. Did you ever embalm a body? No? I co