and went on, moistening his lips:
"I was walking along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard
my name called. It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street. By the
way," he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think:
it is Brune--Roger Brune. At first I did not recognise the person who
called me. He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man with
heavy moustaches, and round spectacles. But when he shook my hand I
knew him at once. He was a man called Dalton, who was taken prisoner at
Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with us--a major in
the regiment where I was captain. We were comrades during two campaigns.
If I had been his brother he couldn't have seemed more pleased to see
me. He took me into a bar for the sake of old times. The drink went to
my head, and by the time we reached Trafalgar Square I was quite unable
to walk. He made me sit down on a bench. I was in fact--drunk. It's
disgraceful to be drunk, but there was some excuse. Now I tell you, sir"
(all through his story he was always making use of that expression, it
seemed to infuse fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure
places, to give him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece
of paper a nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech),
"there never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton. He was
not clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
fond of talking. But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I had
been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman not
to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God knows what
things I said to him while we were sitting there! He took me to his home
and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with fever." He stopped,
turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to his brow. "Well, then
it was, sir, that I first saw her. I am not a poet and I cannot tell you
what she seemed to me. I was delirious, but I always knew when she was
there. I had dreams of sunshine and cornfields, of dancing waves at sea,
young trees--never the same dreams, never anything for long together;
and when I had my senses I was afraid to say so for fear she would go
away. She'd be in the corner of the room, with her hair hanging about
her neck, a bright gold colour; she never worked and never read, but
sat and talked to herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time
together out of