train, and it may be imagined whether on the Saturday afternoon I was
punctual at Waterloo. He carried his benevolence to the point of
coming to meet me at the little station at which I was to alight, and
my heart beat very fast as I saw his handsome face, surmounted with a
soft wide-awake and which I knew by a photograph long since enshrined
on my mantel-shelf, scanning the carriage-windows as the train rolled
up. He recognised me as infallibly as I had recognised himself; he
appeared to know by instinct how a young American of critical
pretensions, rash youth, would look when much divided between
eagerness and modesty. He took me by the hand and smiled at me and
said: "You must be--a--YOU, I think!" and asked if I should mind
going on foot to his house, which would take but a few minutes. I
remember feeling it a piece of extraordinary affability that he
should give directions about the conveyance of my bag; I remember
feeling altogether very happy and rosy, in fact quite transported,
when he laid his hand on my shoulder as we came out of the station.

I surveyed him, askance, as we walked together; I had already, I had
indeed instantly, seen him as all delightful. His face is so well
known that I needn't describe it; he looked to me at once an English
gentleman and a man of genius, and I thought that a happy
combination. There was a brush of the Bohemian in his fineness; you
would easily have guessed his belonging to the artist guild. He was
addicted to velvet jackets, to cigarettes, to loose shirt-collars, to
looking a little dishevelled. His features, which were firm but not
perfectly regular, are fairly enough represented in his portraits;
but no portrait I have seen gives any idea of his expression. There
were innumerable things in it, and they chased each other in and out
of his face. I have seen people who were grave and gay in quick
alternation; but Mark Ambient was grave and gay at one and the same