itation.
At one end of the table sat a man of perhaps forty years of age. An
agreeable face, for all of the tired droop about the mouth and the deep
lines in the forehead; it could light up, too, upon occasion, as I was
soon to discover. For the present I did not bother myself with
profitless conjectures; that entrancing filet, displayed in a massive
silver cover, stood before him; I could not take my eyes from it.

My host, for such he evidently was, rose and bowed with great
politeness.

"You must pardon me," he said, "for sitting down; but, as my note said,
I dine at nine. I will have the shell-fish and soup brought on."

"I should prefer to begin with the filet," I said, decidedly.

A servant brought me a plate; my hand trembled, but I succeeded in
helping myself without spilling the precious sauce; I ate.

"There are three conditions of men who might be expected to accept the
kind of invitation which has brought me the honor of your company,"
remarked my host as we lit our cigarettes over the Roman punch. "To
particularize, there is the curious impertinent, the merely foolish
person, and the man in extremis rerum. Now I have no liking for the
dog-faced breed, as Homer would put it, and neither do I suffer fools
gladly. At least, one of the latter is not likely to bother me again."
He smiled grimly, and I thought of Bingham's face of terror.

"I found my desperate man in you, my dear Mr. Thorp, shall we drink to
our better acquaintance?" I bowed, and we drank.

"The precise nature of your misfortune does not concern me," he
continued, airily. "It is sufficient that we are of the same mind in
our attitude towards the world--'to shake with Destiny for beers,' is
it not?

"One may meet with many things on the highway of life--poverty,
disease, sorrow, treacheries. These are disagreeable, I admit, but they
are positive; one may overcome or, at least, forget them. But suppose
you stand confronting the negative of existence; the highway is clear,
indeed, but how interminable its vista, its straight, smooth, and
intolerably level stretch. That road is mine.

"Yes; I have tried the by-paths. Once I was shanghaied; twice I have
been marooned and by my own men. That last amused me--a little. I was
the second man to arrive at Bordeaux in the Paris-Madrid race of 1903;
during the Spanish-American war I acted as a spy for the United States
government in Barcelona.

"I made the common mistake of confounding the unusua