with a laugh, "don't pretend I haven't been boring your head off with all
this talk about myself. You've been too patient. I'm off. Shall I see you
to-morrow? Perhaps you'd lunch with us to-morrow? It would be a great
pleasure for my wife. We're at the Grand Hotel."

I said I should be most happy, and called the waiter; at sight of
whom my friend said he had talked himself thirsty, and asked for another
glass of water. He mentioned that he had brought his car over
with him: his little daughter (by the news of whose existence I felt
idiotically surprised) was very keen on motoring, and they were all three
starting the day after to-morrow on a little tour through France.
Afterward they were going on to Switzerland "for some climbing." Did I
care about motoring? If so, we might go for a spin after luncheon, to
Rouen or somewhere. He drank his glass of water, and, linking a
friendly arm in mine, passed out with me into the corridor. He asked
what I was writing now, and said that he looked to me to "do something
big one of these days," and that he was sure I had it in me. This remark,
though of course I pretended to be pleased by it, irritated me very much.
It was destined, as you shall see, to irritate me very much more in
recollection.

Yet I was glad he had asked me to luncheon--glad because I liked
him and glad because I dislike mysteries. Though you may think me very
dense for not having thoroughly understood Pethel in the course of my
first meeting with him, the fact is that I was only aware, and that dimly,
of something more in him than he had cared to reveal--some veil behind
which perhaps lurked his right to the title so airily bestowed on him by
Grierson. I assured myself, as I walked home, that if veil there was, I
should to-morrow find an eyelet. But one's intuition when it is off duty
seems always a much more powerful engine than it does on active