joyful reaction which emboldened me to signal
to him with a raised arm across that cafe.

I was abashed immediately afterwards, when I saw him advance towards my
table with his friend. The latter was eminently elegant. He was exactly
like one of those figures one can see of a fine May evening in the
neighbourhood of the Opera-house in Paris. Very Parisian indeed. And
yet he struck me as not so perfectly French as he ought to have been, as
if one's nationality were an accomplishment with varying degrees of
excellence. As to Mills, he was perfectly insular. There could be no
doubt about him. They were both smiling faintly at me. The burly Mills
attended to the introduction: "Captain Blunt."

We shook hands. The name didn't tell me much. What surprised me was
that Mills should have remembered mine so well. I don't want to boast of
my modesty but it seemed to me that two or three days was more than
enough for a man like Mills to forget my very existence. As to the
Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his
personality. Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face,
pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality
only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every
day in the south of France and still less in Italy. Another thing was
that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently
professional. That imperfection was interesting, too.

You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you
may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it
is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count
for interest and memory--and pretty well nothing else. This--you see--is
the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that
woman. These are like the last hours of a previous existence. It isn't
my fault that they are associated with nothing better at the decisive
moment than the banal splendours of a gilded cafe and the bedlamite yells
of carnival in the street.

We three, however (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed
attitudes of serious amiability round our table. A waiter approached for
orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the
absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he
was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began charging
his pipe. I felt extreme