ds of the longish table, so that we got our first real look
at each other in the secluded corner to which Mrs. Cumnor's vigilance
now directed us.

Merrick was still handsome in his stooping tawny way: handsomer perhaps,
with thinnish hair and more lines in his face, than in the young excess
of his good looks. He was very glad to see me and conveyed his gladness
by the same charming smile; but as soon as we began to talk I felt
a change. It was not merely the change that years and experience and
altered values bring. There was something more fundamental the matter
with Merrick, something dreadful, unforeseen, unaccountable: Merrick had
grown conventional and dull.

In the glow of his frank pleasure in seeing me I was ashamed to analyze
the nature of the change; but presently our talk began to flag--fancy a
talk with Merrick flagging!--and self-deception became impossible as I
watched myself handing out platitudes with the gesture of the salesman
offering something to a purchaser "equally good." The worst of it was
that Merrick--Merrick, who had once felt everything!--didn't seem to
feel the lack of spontaneity in my remarks, but hung on' them with a
harrowing faith in the resuscitating power of our past. It was as if he
hugged the empty vessel of our friendship without perceiving that the
last drop of its essence was dry.

But after all, I am exaggerating. Through my surprise and disappointment
I felt a certain sense of well-being in the mere physical presence of my
old friend. I liked looking at the way his dark hair waved away from
the forehead, at the tautness of his dry brown cheek, the thoughtful
backward tilt of his head, the way his brown eyes mused upon the
scene through lowered lids. All the past was in his way of looking and
sitting, and I wanted to stay near him, and felt that he wanted me
to stay; but the devil of it was that neither of us knew what to talk
about.

It was this difficulty which caused me, after a while, since I could not
follow Merrick's talk, to follow his eyes in their roaming circuit of
the room.

At the moment when our glances joined, his had paused on a lady
seated at some distance from our corner. Immersed, at first, in the
satisfaction of finding myself again with Merrick, I had been only half
aware of this lady, as of one of the few persons present whom I did not
know, or had failed to remember. There was nothing in her appearance to
challenge my attention or to excite my curios