fat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, tough
fiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea
thing. One got an impression of strength.

The country was before the open window; the clusters of
cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the
great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river
and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending
indiscernibly into the sky. A soft sun, clouded with the haze of
autumn, shone over it.

"You know how the faint moisture in the bare foot will make an
impression."

He paused as though there was some compelling force in the
reflection. It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to what
race the man belonged. He came from some queer blend of Eastern
peoples. His body and the cast of his features were Mongolian.
But one got always, before him, a feeling of the hot East lying
low down against the stagnant Suez. One felt that he had risen
slowly into our world of hard air and sun out of the vast
sweltering ooze of it.

He spoke English with a certain care in the selection of the
words, but with ease and an absence of effort, as though
languages were instinctive to him - as though he could speak any
language. And he impressed one with this same effortless
facility in all the things he did.

It is necessary to try to understand this, because it explains