 remarks and as much hesitation as
though he had been some sort of wild beast astonished me on being admitted,
first by the beauty of his white head of hair and then by his paternal aspect
and the innocent simplicity of his manner. They laid a cover for him between
Mills and Doña Rita, who quite openly removed the envelopes she had brought with
her, to the other side of her plate. As openly the man's round china-blue eyes
followed them in an attempt to make out the handwriting of the addresses.
    He seemed to know, at least slightly, both Mills and Blunt. To me he gave a
stare of stupid surprise. He addressed our hostess.
    »Resting? Rest is a very good thing. Upon my word, I thought I would find
you alone. But you have too much sense. Neither man nor woman has been created
to live alone. ...« After this opening he had all the talk to himself. It was
left to him pointedly, and I verily believe that I was the only one who showed
an appearance of interest. I couldn't help it. The others, including Mills, sat
like a lot of deaf and dumb people. No. It was even something more detached.
They sat rather like a very superior lot of waxworks, with the fixed but
indetermined facial expression and with that odd air wax figures have of being
aware of their existence being but a sham.
    I was the exception; and nothing could have marked better my status of a
stranger, the completest possible stranger in the moral region in which those
people lived, moved, enjoying or suffering their incomprehensible emotions. I
was as much of a stranger as the most hopeless castaway stumbling in the dark
upon a hut of natives and finding them in the grip of some situation
appertaining to the mentalities, prejudices, and problems of an undiscovered
country - of a country of which he had not even had one single clear glimpse
before.
    It was even worse in a way. It ought to have been more disconcerting. For,
pursuing the image of the castaway blundering upon the complications of an
unknown scheme of life, it was I, the castaway, who was the savage, the simple
innocent child of nature. Those people were obviously more civilized than I was.
They had more rites, more ceremonies, more complexity in their sensations, more
knowledge of evil, more varied meanings to the subtle phrases of their language.
Naturally! I was still so young! And yet I assure you that just then I lost all
sense of inferiority. And why? Of
