ould; yes, I was quite grim over my determination. I was going
to get at the secret that lay behind those hunted eyes.

I was in a queer mood myself; rather a cruel mood, although the
starting-point of my intention had been kind. I knew that my mood had
something of cruelty in it, because I discovered that I was purposely
dawdling over my dinner, in order to keep the man longer than necessary
on the rack. Queer, the complexities one unearths in oneself. But
probably if I had been an ordinary straightforward kind of fellow, I
should never have had the sensibility to recognise in the first instance
that the man wanted to talk to me. It's the reverse of the medal, I
suppose.

He had finished his coffee, of course, long before I had finished my
dinner; he had squeezed the last drop out of the little coffee-pot, and
I wondered with amusement whether he would have the moral courage to
remain where he was now that his ostensible pretext was gone and that
the waiter was beginning to loiter round his table as a hint that he
ought to go. Poor devil, I could see that he was growing uneasy; he
shuffled his feet, and the glances he threw at me became yet more
furtive and reproachful. Still I gave no sign; I don't know what spirit
of sarcasm and teasing possessed me. He stood it for some time, then he
shoved back his chair, reached for his hat, and stood up. It was a
sort of defiance that he was throwing at me, an ultimatum that I should
either end my cat-and-mouse game, or let him go. As he was about to pass
my table on the way out, I spoke to him.

"Care for a look at the evening paper?"

Absurd--isn't it?--that one should have to cloak one's interest in a
stranger's soul under such a convention as the offer of a paper. Why
couldn't I have said to him straight out, "Look here, what's the matter
with you?" But our affairs are not so conducted. He accepted my offer,
and stood awkwardly reading the _City News_, which I thought a sure
indication of his confusion, as by no stretch of fancy could I imagine
him the possessor of stocks or shares. "Sit down," I said, "while you
read."

He sat down, with a mumble of thanks, laying his old black wideawake
beside him on my table. I think he was glad of the paper, for it gave
him something to do with his hands and his eyes. I observed him, and he
must have known I was observing him. Underneath the thick, snow-white
hair the face was young, although so sunken and so sallow, the face of a
m