was an
Englishman.

His feeling of bored disgust was intensified by the conduct of a
long-nosed, sallow man, who had put his luggage into the same carriage
as that where Coxeter's seat had been reserved.

Strange how the peculiar characteristics common to the Jewish race
survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was
saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a
very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered
idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was
half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm,
now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face,
while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and
extravagant terms of affection. "_Adieu, mon petit homme adore!_" she
finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to
Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice,
albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my
dear girl. It's only for a fortnight after all."

Coxeter felt a pang of sincere pity for the poor fellow; a cad, no
doubt--but an English cad, cursed with an emotional French wife!

Then his attention had been most happily diverted by the unexpected
appearance of Mrs. Archdale. She had come up behind him very quietly,
and he had heard her speak before actually seeing her. "Mr. Coxeter, are
you going back to England, or have you only come to see someone off?"

Not even then had Coxeter--to use a phrase which he himself would not
have used, for he avoided the use of slang--"given himself away." Over
his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had
still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been
looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the
compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved
for himself, not even she--noted though she was for her powers of
sympathy and understanding--had divined the delicious tremor, the
curious state of mingled joy and discomfort into which her sudden
presence had thrown the man whom she had greeted a little doubtfully, by
no means sure that he would welcome her companionship on a long journey.

And, indeed, in spite of the effect she produced upon him, in spite of
the fact that she was the only human being who had ever had, or was ever
likely to have, the power of making him fe