mercifully blinded. If some of us were a little more observant, a few of
the human combinations which we bring about might perhaps be less
egregiously mistaken.

It was probably the form of the lips that lent pleasantness to the smile
with which Mr. Jacquetot was greeted, rather than the expression of the
velvety eyes, which had in reality no power of smiling at all. They were
sad eyes, like those of the women one sees on the banks of the Upper
Nile, which never alter in expression--eyes that do not seem to be busy
with this life at all, but fully occupied with something else: something
beyond to-morrow or behind yesterday.

"Not yet arrived?" inquired the new-comer in a voice of some
distinction. It was a full, rich voice, and the French it spoke was not
the French of Mr. Jacquetot, nor, indeed, of the Rue St. Gingolphe. It
was the language one sometimes hears in an old _chateau_ lost in
the depths of the country--the vast unexplored rural districts of
France--where the bearers of dangerously historical names live out their
lives with a singular suppression and patience. They are either biding
their time or else they are content with the past and the part played by
their ancestors therein. For there is an old French and a new. In Paris
the new is spoken--the very newest. Were it anything but French it would
be intolerably vulgar; as it is, it is merely neat and intensely
expressive.

"Not yet arrived, sir," said the tobacconist, and then he seemed to
recollect himself, for he repeated:

"Not yet arrived," without the respectful addition which had slipped out
by accident.