care. His uniform kindliness of manner made it impossible for me
to tell. And I can hardly remember my own feelings. Did I care?
The whole recollection of that time of my life has such a peculiar
quality that the beginning and the end of it are merged in one
sensation of profound emotion, continuous and overpowering,
containing the extremes of exultation, full of careless joy and of
an invincible sadness--like a day-dream. The sense of all this
having been gone through as if in one great rush of imagination is
all the stronger in the distance of time, because it had something
of that quality even then: of fate unprovoked, of events that
didn't cast any shadow before.

Not that those events were in the least extraordinary. They were,
in truth, commonplace. What to my backward glance seems startling
and a little awful is their punctualness and inevitability. Mills
was punctual. Exactly at a quarter to twelve he appeared under the
lofty portal of the Hotel de Louvre, with his fresh face, his ill-
fitting grey suit, and enveloped in his own sympathetic atmosphere.

How could I have avoided him? To this day I have a shadowy
conviction of his inherent distinction of mind and heart, far
beyond any man I have ever met since. He was unavoidable: and of
course I never tried to avoid him. The first sight on which his
eyes fell was a victoria pulled up before the hotel door, in which
I sat with no sentiment I can remember now but that of some slight
shyness. He got in without a moment's hesitation, his friendly
glance took me in from head to foot and (such was his peculiar
gift) gave me a pleasurable sensation.

After we had gone a little way I couldn't help saying to him with a