detachment, that odd American astuteness which seems the fruit of
innocence rather than of experience. His nationality revealed itself
again in a mild interest in the political problems of his adopted
country, though they appeared to preoccupy him only as illustrating
the boundless perversity of mankind. The exhibition of human folly
never ceased to divert him, and though his examples of it seemed
mainly drawn from the columns of one exiguous daily paper, he found
there matter for endless variations on his favorite theme. If this
monotony of topic did not weary the younger man, it was because he
fancied he could detect under it the tragic implication of the fixed
idea--of some great moral upheaval which had flung his friend
stripped and starving on the desert island of the little cafe where
they met. He hardly knew wherein he read this revelation--whether in
the resigned shabbiness of the sage's dress, the impartial courtesy
of his manner, or the shade of apprehension which lurked,
indescribably, in his guileless yet suspicious eye. There were
moments when Garnett could only define him by saying that he looked
like a man who had seen a ghost.






II