Tall and strong, he had a
handsome face, with a round head and close-curling hair; the whites of
his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his brown moustache, gleamed
vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made out that he was sunburnt,
as if he lived much in the open air, and that he looked intelligent but
also slightly brutal, though not in a morose way. His brutality, if he
had any, was bright and finished. I had to tell him who I was, but even
then I saw how little he placed me and that my explanations gave me in
his mind no great identity or at any rate no great importance. I foresaw
that he would in intercourse make me feel sometimes very young and
sometimes very old, caring himself but little which. He mentioned, as if
to show our companion that he might safely be left to his own devices,
that he had once started from London to Bombay at three quarters of an
hour's notice.
"Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!"
"Oh the people I was with--!" he returned; and his tone appeared to
signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He
asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced
syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept
going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they _were_ kept
going he went on: "Oh yes, I had various things there; but you know I've
walked down the hill since.
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