pale-faced, delicate-looking young man who smiled with his very blue,
friendly eyes. There was always an element in Peter that inspired pity;
one divined in him a merry unfortunate.

The people in the hotel were of many races--French, Italian, German, and
one English family. Castoleto is not an Anglo-Saxon resort; it is small
and of no reputation, and not as yet Anglicised. Probably the one English
family in the hotel was motoring down the coast, and only staying for one
night.

Peter, in his course round the garden, came suddenly within earshot of
cultured English voices, and heard some one laugh. Then a voice, soft in
quality, with casual, pleasant, unemphasised cadence, said, "Considering
these vile roads, she's running extraordinarily well. Really, something
ought to be done about the roads, though; it's absolutely disgraceful.
Blake says ..." one of the things that chauffeurs do say, and that
Peter did not listen to.

Peter had stopped suddenly where he was when the speaker had laughed. Of
the many personal attributes of man, some may become slurred out of all
character, disguised and levelled down among the herd, blurred with time,
robbed of individuality. Faces may be so lost and blurred, almost beyond
the recognition of those who have loved them. But who ever forgot a
friend's laugh, or lost the character of his own? If Ulysses had laughed
when he came back to Ithaca, his dog would have missed his eternal
distinction.

Soft, rather low, a thing not detached from the sentence it broke into,
but rather breaking out of it, and merging then into words again--Peter
had carried it in his ears for ten years. Was there ever any man but one