of my
fellowmen. I have seen cities at sunrise so beautiful I have gone down
to my room and shed tears of ridiculous sorrow. And I have seen the
patrons of female beauty, too, coming back from the cities to the ships
with dry palates, and their neckties under their ears....

"Well! We stood there, and to ease the pressure of the moment she put up
the binoculars and swept the little beach, finally coming to rest at the
big house--Gruenbaum's house. While we had been talking a light had come
out on the balcony, and figures began to move about with the precise and
enigmatic motions of marionettes. Without glasses I could see Gruenbaum
seated at a table with a big lamp over his head. Another figure moved to
the open side and stood still. I was wondering what this portended when
Gruenbaum half rose and waved his arms, and the other figure turned and
dwindled rapidly into obscurity, suddenly coming into the light again at
the other side of the table. And Artemisia said quietly, 'There's
father!' and handed me the binoculars.

"To say that I was interested would not put the matter in its true
light. I was more than that. There was a fantastic quality in the whole
business which was almost supernatural. It is strange enough to meet a
person after many years; stranger still to meet one who has made a
powerful yet unsympathetic impression upon you--to meet him with all
your old dislikes and prejudices washed to a clear and colourless
curiosity. But to see such a man as I saw Captain Macedoine, afar off,
through an atmosphere charged with the electric blue radiance of
moonlight, moving in an alien orbit, animated by unknown emotions--why,
it was like seeing a man who was dead and gone to another world! I
raised the glasses and focussed them. Captain Macedoine stood leaning
heavily on his hands as they grasped the edge of the table, and he was
staring straight out at me. Of course he could see nothing beyond the
balcony, but the impression was exactly that of a man striving to win
back across the gulf to his former existence. And his strained
immobility was accentuated by the figure of Gruenbaum with his jerkily
moving arms, his polished forehead gleaming in the lamplight, the
gyrations of his chin as he turned every moment or so and looked up
sideways at the other. Gruenbaum flourished papers, reaching out and
rearranging them, throwing himself back in his chair and beating the
table with a folded document to emphasize his words