a table outside,
asked for cherry brandy, a liqueur which I keep, but is seldom demanded.
Then the monster, with great politeness, invited me to partake
of a vermouth before my dinner, and we fell into conversation.
He had apparently crossed from Kent by a small boat got at a private
bargain because of some odd fancy he had for passing promptly in an
easterly direction, and not waiting for any of the official boats.
He was, he somewhat vaguely explained, looking for a house. When I
naturally asked him where the house was, he answered that he did not know;
it was on an island; it was somewhere to the east; or, as he expressed
it with a hazy and yet impatient gesture, `over there.'

"I asked him how, if he did not know the place, he would know it when he
saw it. Here he suddenly ceased to be hazy, and became alarmingly minute.
He gave a description of the house detailed enough for an auctioneer.
I have forgotten nearly all the details except the last two, which were
that the lamp-post was painted green, and that there was a red pillar-box
at the corner.

"`A red pillar-box!' I cried in astonishment. `Why, the place must
be in England!'

"`I had forgotten,' he said, nodding heavily. `That is the island's name.'

"`But, ~nom du nom~,' I cried testily, `you've just come
from England, my boy.'

"`They SAID it was England,' said my imbecile, conspiratorially.
`They said it was Kent. But Kentish men are such liars one can't
believe anything they say.'

"`Monsieur,' I said, `you must pardon me. I am elderly,
and the ~fumisteries~ of the young men are beyond me.
I go by common sense, or, at the largest, by that extension
of applied common sense called science.'

"`Science!' cried the stranger. `There is only one good thing
science ever discovered--a good thing, good tidings of great joy--
that the world is round.'

"I told him with civility that his words conveyed no impression
to my intelligence. `I mean,' he said, `that going right round
the world is the shortest way to where you are already.'

"`Is it not even shorter,' I asked, `to stop where you are?'

"`No, no, no!' he cried emphatically. `That way is long and very weary.
At the end of the world, at the back of the dawn, I shall find
the wife I really married and the house that is really mine.
And that house will have a greener lamp-post and a redder pillar-box.
Do you,' he asked with a sudden intensity, `do you never want to rush
out of your house in