one was waiting for him somewhere--some one whom he had definitely
arranged to meet. He was expected by a person that very night and just
about that very time. But by whom? Where? A curious inner trembling came
over him, and he made a strong effort to hold himself in hand and to be
ready for anything that might come.

And then suddenly came the knowledge that the place of appointment was
this very restaurant, and, further, that the person he had promised to
meet was already here, waiting somewhere quite close beside him.

He looked up nervously and began to examine the faces round him. The
majority of the diners were Frenchmen, chattering loudly with much
gesticulation and laughter; and there was a fair sprinkling of clerks
like himself who came because the prices were low and the food good, but
there was no single face that he recognised until his glance fell upon
the occupant of the corner seat opposite, generally filled by himself.

"There's the man who's waiting for me!" thought Jones instantly.

He knew it at once. The man, he saw, was sitting well back into the
corner, with a thick overcoat buttoned tightly up to the chin. His skin
was very white, and a heavy black beard grew far up over his cheeks. At
first the secretary took him for a stranger, but when he looked up and
their eyes met, a sense of familiarity flashed across him, and for a
second or two Jones imagined he was staring at a man he had known years
before. For, barring the beard, it was the face of an elderly clerk who
had occupied the next desk to his own when he first entered the service
of the insurance company, and had shown him the most painstaking
kindness and sympathy in the early difficulties of his work. But a
moment later the illusion passed, for he remembered that Thorpe had been