marble-topped table in the middle of the hall. She seized one of
them with a wonderfully quick, almost feline, movement and tore it

open, saying to us, "Excuse me, I must . . . Do go into the dining-
room. Captain Blunt, show the way."

Her widened eyes stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the
doors open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant

exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and
ending in a laugh which had in it a note of contempt.

The door closed behind us; we had been abandoned by Mr. Blunt. He
had remained on the other side, possibly to soothe. The room in

which we found ourselves was long like a gallery and ended in a
rotunda with many windows. It was long enough for two fireplaces

of red polished granite. A table laid out for four occupied very
little space. The floor inlaid in two kinds of wood in a bizarre

pattern was highly waxed, reflecting objects like still water.
Before very long Dona Rita and Blunt rejoined us and we sat down

around the table; but before we could begin to talk a dramatically
sudden ring at the front door stilled our incipient animation.

Dona Rita looked at us all in turn, with surprise and, as it were,
with suspicion. "How did he know I was here?" she whispered after

looking at the card which was brought to her. She passed it to
Blunt, who passed it to Mills, who made a faint grimace, dropped it

on the table-cloth, and only whispered to me, "A journalist from
Paris."

"He has run me to earth," said Dona Rita. "One would bargain for
peace against hard cash if these fellows weren't always ready to

snatch at one's very soul with the other hand. It frightens me."
Her voice floated mysterious and penetrating from her lips, which

moved very little. Mills was watching her with sympathetic
curiosity. Mr. Blunt muttered: "Better not make the brute angry."

For a moment Dona Rita's face, with its narrow eyes, its wide brow,
and high cheek bones, became very still; then her colour was a

little heightened. "Oh," she said softly, "let him come in. He
would be really dangerous if he had a mind - you know," she said to

Mills.
The person who had provoked all those remarks and as much

hesitation as though he had been some sort of wild beast astonished
me on being admitted, first by the beauty of his white head of hair

and then by his paternalaspect and the innocentsimplicity of his
manner. They laid a cover for him between Mills and Dona Rita, who

quite openly removed the envelopes she had brought with her, to the
other side of her plate. As openly the man's round china-blue eyes

followed them in an attempt to make out the handwriting of the
addresses.

He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me
he gave a stare of stupid surprise. He addressed our hostess.

"Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my word, I thought I
would find you alone. But you have too much sense. Neither man

nor woman has been created to live alone. . . ." After this
opening he had all the talk to himself. It was left to him

pointedly, and I verily believe that I was the only one who showed
an appearance of interest. I couldn't help it. The others,

including Mills, sat like a lot of deaf and dumb people. No. It
was even something more detached. They sat rather like a very

superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed but indetermined facial
expression and with that odd air wax figures have of being aware of

their existence being but a sham.
I was the exception; and nothing could have marked better my status

of a stranger, the completest possible stranger in the moral region
in which those people lived, moved, enjoying or suffering their

incomprehensible emotions. I was as much of a stranger as the most
hopeless castaway stumbling in the dark upon a hut of natives and

finding them in the grip of some situation appertaining to the
mentalities, prejudices, and problems of an undiscovered country -

of a country of which he had not even had one single clear glimpse
before.

It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been more
disconcerting. For, pursuing the image of the cast-away blundering

upon the complications of an unknown scheme of life, it was I, the
castaway, who was the savage, the simple innocent child of nature.

Those people were obviously more civilized than I was. They had
more rites, more ceremonies, more complexity in their sensations,

more knowledge of evil, more varied meanings to the subtle phrases
of their language. Naturally! I was still so young! And yet I

assure you, that just then I lost all sense of inferiority. And
why? Of course the carelessness and the ignorance of youth had

something to do with that. But there was something else besides.
Looking at Dona Rita, her head leaning on her hand, with her dark

lashes lowered on the slightly flushed cheek, I felt no longer
alone in my youth. That woman of whom I had heard these things I

have set down with all the exactness of unfailing memory, that
woman was revealed to me young, younger than anybody I had ever

seen, as young as myself (and my sensation of my youth was then
very acute); revealed with something peculiarlyintimate in the

conviction, as if she were young exactly in the same way in which I
felt myself young; and that therefore no misunderstanding between

us was possible and there could be nothing more for us to know
about each other. Of course this sensation was momentary, but it

was illuminating; it was a light which could not last, but it left
no darkness behind. On the contrary, it seemed to have kindled

magically somewhere within me a glow of assurance, of unaccountable
confidence in myself: a warm, steady, and eager sensation of my

individual life beginning for good there, on that spot, in that
sense of solidarity, in that seduction.

CHAPTER II
For this, properlyspeaking wonderful, reason I was the only one of

the company who could listen without constraint to the unbidden
guest with that fine head of white hair, so beautifully kept, so

magnificently waved, so artistically arranged that respect could
not be felt for it any more than for a very expensive wig in the

window of a hair-dresser. In fact, I had an inclination to smile
at it. This proves how unconstrained I felt. My mind was

perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that room mine was
the only pair able to look about in easy freedom. All the other

listeners' eyes were cast down, including Mills' eyes, but that I
am sure was only because of his perfect and delicatesympathy. He

could not have been concerned otherwise.
The intruder devoured the cutlets - if they were cutlets.

Notwithstanding my perfect liberty of mind I was not aware of what
we were eating. I have a notion that the lunch was a mere show,

except of course for the man with the white hair, who was really
hungry and who, besides, must have had the pleasant sense of

dominating the situation. He stooped over his plate and worked his
jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled incessantly; but as a

matter of fact he never looked openly at any one of us. Whenever
he laid down his knife and fork he would throw himself back and

start retailing in a light tone some Parisian gossip about
prominent people.

He talked first about a certain politician of mark. His "dear
Rita" knew him. His costume dated back to '48, he was made of wood

and parchment and still swathed his neck in a white cloth; and even
his wife had never been seen in a low-necked dress. Not once in

her life. She was buttoned up to the chin like her husband. Well,
that man had confessed to him that when he was engaged in political

controversy, not on a matter of principle but on some special
measure in debate, he felt ready to kill everybody.

He interrupted himself for a comment. "I am something like that
myself. I believe it's a purelyprofessional feeling. Carry one's

point whatever it is. Normally I couldn't kill a fly. My
sensibility is too acute for that. My heart is too tender also.

Much too tender. I am a Republican. I am a Red. As to all our
present masters and governors, all those people you are trying to

turn round your little finger, they are all horrible Royalists in