a dozen ways. His face, to begin with, made disguise easy, and the touch
of the country did much for him in this respect. He had played behind
his father's up-country bungalow with little Burmese boys and talked in
their speech before he knew any English; the Bazaar was an open book to
him, and the mind of the native, so some men said with a shade of
contempt, not too far from his own to make understanding impossible.

Besides all this, there were those other years, after he left the school
under the high snow ranges, when Coryndon had vanished entirely, and of
these years he never spoke. And yet, with all this, Coryndon was
unmistakably a "Sahib," a man of unusual culture and brilliant ability.
He had complete powers of self-control, and his one passion was his love
of music, and though he never played for anyone else, men who had come
upon him unawares had heard him playing to himself in a way that was as
surprising as everything else about Coryndon surprised and astonished.

He had dreamed as a boy, and he still dreamed as a man. The subtle
beauty of a line of verse led him into visionary habitations as fair as
any ever disclosed to poet or artist. He could lose himself utterly in
the lights and shadows of a passing day, while he watched for a doomed
man at the entrance of a temple, or brooded over painted sores and cried
to the rich for alms by a dusty roadside; a very different Coryndon to
the Coryndon who looked at Hartley across the white cloth of the round
dinner-table.

The truth about Coryndon was that he read the souls of men. Mhtoon Pah
had boasted to Hartley that he read the walk of the world he looked at,
but Coryndon went much further; and as Hartley talked about outward
things, whilst the Boy and the _Khitmutghar_ flitted in and out behind
them, carrying plates and dishes, his guest was considering him with a