greater than the interest of what he retains, because it is on the
latter that the pearls of life are, so to speak, strung.

In this case the two incidents I have kept are both so pregnant of
influence upon his later life, so necessary to the logical
development of his principles, that, in spite of their romantic, not
to say wild, character, I have retained them.




CHAPTER VII


About the middle of February, 1879, I was sitting at work in my
lodgings in Newman Street, when I was interrupted by the advent of my
landlady, to inform me that there was a gentleman below who wished to
see me. I told her to show him up, and she returned in a moment,
ushering in, to my extreme surprise, Arthur Hamilton. I confess I
hardly knew him at first. He had grown a beard, and looked thinner
and graver than he used to do. He had the same slow, almost stately
movement, with a slight and not ungraceful suggestion of languor;
his manner was somewhat changed, and very much improved; and he had
contracted, from living so long with strangers, a delightfully frank
and free way of speaking. He never gave me, as he used to, the least
feeling of constraint; he always seemed perfectly at his ease. And
he had acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a
tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion,
and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called
influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile,