stable, and was laid up.

'You have been very good to him,' I said. 'I think he was.'

'His reticence was due,' she continued, as if defying contradiction,
'to a simple dislike to bore one with his personal affairs.'

'Was it?' I assented. My tone acknowledged with all humility that
she was likely to know, and I did not deserve her doubtful glance.

'He could not certainly,' she went on, with firmer decision, 'have
been in the least ashamed of his connection with Kauffer.'

'He comes from a country where social distinctions are less sharp
than they are in this idiotic place,' I observed.

'Oh, if you think it is from any lack of recognition! His
sensitiveness is beyond reason. He has met two or three men in the
Military Department here--he was aware of the nicest shade of their
patronage. But he does not care. To him life is more than a
clerkship. He sees all round people like that. They are only
figures in the landscape.'

'Then,' I said, 'he is not at all concerned that nobody in this
Capua of ours knows him, or cares anything about him, or has bought
a scrap of his work, except our two selves.'

'That's a different matter. I have tried to rouse in him the
feeling that it would be as well to be appreciated, even in Simla,
and I think I've succeeded. He said, after those two men had gone