were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide apart, under the same broad
forehead; the same fine nose and chin, the same sensitive mouth. The
whole face was pretty much the same, only thinner perhaps, and with a
look of apathy, of inanimation, that was foreign to my recollection of
it. His hair had turned quite white, but otherwise he appeared no
older than his years. His figure, tall, slender, well-knit, retained
its vigour and its distinction. Though he wore a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and his beard was two days old, you could in no circumstances
have taken him for anything but a gentleman. I waited anxiously for
the time when we should be alone--anxiously, yet with a sort of
terror. I was burning to understand, and yet I shrunk from doing so.
If to conjecture even vaguely what experiences could have brought him
to this, what dark things suffered or done, had been melancholy when
he was a nameless old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded
the explanation that I longed to hear.

At last he struck his final chord, and rose from the piano. Then he
turned to me and said, composedly enough, 'Well, I'm ready.' He,
apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In the street
he took my arm. 'Let's walk in this direction,' he said, leading off,
'towards the Christian quarter of the town.' And in a moment he went
on: 'This has been an odd meeting. What brings you to Bordeaux?'

I explained that I was on my way to Biarritz, stopping for the night
between two trains.

'Then it's all the more surprising that you should have stumbled into
the Brasserie des Quatre Vents. You've altered very slightly. The
world wags well with you? You look prosperous.'