MONTHS, the whole truth about Mr. Abel. Hardly less could have
been looked for from his nearest friend, and I had hoped that the

discussion in the newspapers would have ceased, at all events,
until the appearance of the promised book. It has not been so;

and at this distance from Guiana I was not aware of how much
conjectural matter was being printed week by week in the local

press, some of which must have been painfulreading to Mr. Abel's
friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never

been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished
only with an ebony stand on which stood a cinerary urn, its

surface ornamented with flower and leaf and thorn, and winding
through it all the figure of a serpent; an inscription, too, of

seven short words which no one could understand or rightly
interpret; and finally the disposal of the mysterious ashes--that

was all there was relating to an untold chapter in a man's life
for imagination to work on. Let us hope that now, at last, the

romance-weaving will come to an end. It was, however, but
natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; not

only because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man,
which all recognized and which won all hearts, but also because

of that hidden chapter--that sojourn in the desert, about which
he preserved silence. It was felt in a vague way by his

intimates that he had met with unusual experiences which had
profoundlyaffected him and changed the course of his life. To

me alone was the truth known, and I must now tell, briefly as
possible, how my great friendship and close intimacy with him

came about.
When, in 1887, I arrived in Georgetown to take up an appointment

in a public office, I found Mr. Abel an old resident there, a man
of means and a favourite in society. Yet he was an alien, a

Venezuelan, one of that turbulent people on our border whom the
colonists have always looked on as their natural enemies. The

story told to me was that about twelve years before that time he
had arrived at Georgetown from some remote district in the

interior; that he had journeyed alone on foot across half the
continent to the coast, and had first appeared among them, a

young stranger, penniless, in rags, wasted almost to a skeleton
by fever and misery of all kinds, his face blackened by long

exposure to sun and wind. Friendless, with but little English,
it was a hard struggle for him to live; but he managed somehow,

and eventually letters from Caracas informed him that a
considerable property of which he had been deprived was once more

his own, and he was also invited to return to his country to take
his part in the government of the Republic. But Mr. Abel, though

young, had already outlived political passions and aspirations,
and, apparently, even the love of his country; at all events, he

elected to stay where he was--his enemies, he would say
smilingly, were his best friends--and one of the first uses he

made of his fortune was to buy that house in Main Street which
was afterwards like a home to me.

I must state here that my friend's full name was Abel Guevez de
Argensola, but in his early days in Georgetown he was called by

his Christian name only, and later he wished to be known simply
as "Mr. Abel."

I had no sooner made his acquaintance than I ceased to wonder at
the esteem and even affection with which he, a Venezuelan, was

regarded in this British colony. All knew and liked him, and the
reason of it was the personal charm of the man, his kindly

disposition, his manner with women, which pleased them and
excited no man's jealousy--not even the old hot-tempered

planter's, with a very young and pretty and light-headed
wife--his love of little children, of all wild creatures, of

nature, and of whatsoever was furthest removed from the common
material interests and concerns of a purelycommercial community.

The things which excited other men--politics, sport, and the
price of crystals--were outside of his thoughts; and when men had

done with them for a season, when like the tempest they had
"blown their fill" in office and club-room and house and wanted a

change, it was a relief to turn to Mr. Abel and get him to
discourse of his world--the world of nature and of the spirit.

It was, all felt, a good thing to have a Mr. Abel in Georgetown.
That it was indeed good for me I quickly discovered. I had

certainly not expected to meet in such a place with any person to
share my tastes--that love of poetry which has been the chief

passion and delight of my life; but such a one I had found in Mr.
Abel. It surprised me that he, suckled on the literature of

Spain, and a reader of only ten or twelve years of English
literature, possessed a knowledge of our modern poetry as

intimate as my own, and a love of it equally great. This feeling
brought us together and made us two--the nervous olive-skinned

Hispano-American of the tropics and the phlegmatic blue-eyed
Saxon of the cold north--one in spirit and more than brothers.

Many were the daylight hours we spent together and "tired the sun
with talking"; many, past counting, the precious evenings in that

restful house of his where I was an almost daily guest. I had
not looked for such happiness; nor, he often said, had he. A

result of this intimacy was that the vague idea concerning his
hidden past, that some unusual experience had profoundlyaffected

him and perhaps changed the whole course of his life, did not
diminish, but, on the contrary, became accentuated, and was often

in my mind. The change in him was almost painful to witness
whenever our wandering talk touched on the subject of the

aborigines, and of the knowledge he had acquired of their
character and languages when living or travelling among them; all

that made his conversation most engaging--the lively, curious
mind, the wit, the gaiety of spirit tinged with a tender

melancholy--appeared to fade out of it; even the expression of
his face would change, becoming hard and set, and he would deal

you out facts in a dry mechanical way as if reading them in a
book. It grieved me to note this, but I dropped no hint of such

a feeling, and would never have spoken about it but for a quarrel
which came at last to make the one brief solitary break in that

close friendship of years. I got into a bad state of health, and
Abel was not only much concerned about it, but annoyed, as if I

had not treated him well by being ill, and he would even say that
I could get well if I wished to. I did not take this seriously,

but one morning, when calling to see me at the office, he
attacked me in a way that made me downright angry with him. He

told me that indolence and the use of stimulants was the cause of
my bad health. He spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of not

quite meaning it, but the feeling could not be wholly disguised.
Stung by his reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to

talk to me, even in fun, in such a way. Yes, he said, getting
serious, he had the best right--that of our friendship. He would

be no true friend if he kept his peace about such a matter.
Then, in my haste, I retorted that to me the friendship between

us did not seem so perfect and complete as it did to him. One
condition of friendship is that the partners in it should be

known to each other. He had had my whole life and mind open to
him, to read it as in a book. HIS life was a closed and clasped

volume to me.
His face darkened, and after a few moments' silent reflection he

got up and left me with a cold good-bye, and without that
hand-grasp which had been customary between us.

After his departure I had the feeling that a great loss, a great
calamity, had befallen me, but I was still smarting at his too

candid criticism, all the more because in my heart I acknowledged
its truth. And that night, lying awake, I repented of the cruel

retort I had made, and resolved to ask his forgiveness and leave
it to him to determine the question of our future relations. But

he was beforehand with me, and with the morning came a letter
begging my forgiveness and asking me to go that evening to dine

with him.