imperturbable smile.

Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
manufactured their own thoughts.

Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.

"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
side. If I did not, he would go past."

This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that
direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.
Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets. He was idling in Pall Mall,
avoiding a man here and there. For we all have friends whom we are
content to see pass by on the other side. Deulin's duty was, moreover,
such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often
happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.