I wondered indeed that he was not dining at the Embassy; even though it was summer there must be someone there he knew.
I noticed also that he never smiled.
He talked with a sort of harsh eagerness as though he were afraid of a moment's silence and the sound of his voice shut out of his mind something that tortured him.
It was very strange.
Though I did not like him, though he meant nothing to me and to be with him irked me somewhat, I was against my will a trifle interested.
I gave him a searching glance.
I wondered if it was my fancy that I saw in those pale eyes of his the cowed look of a hunted dog and, notwithstanding his neat features and his expression so civilly controlled, in his aspect something that suggested the grimace of a soul in pain.
I could not understand.
A dozen absurd notions flashed through my mind.
I was not particularly sympathetic: like an old war horse scenting the fray I roused myself.
I had been feeling very tired, but now I grew alert.
My sensibilities put out tentacles.
I was suddenly alive to every expression of his face and every gesture.
I put aside the thought that had come to me that he had written a play and wanted my advice.
These exquisite persons succumb strangely to the glamour of the footlights and they are not averse from getting a few tips from the craftsman whose competence they superciliously despise.
No, it was not that.
A single man in Rome, of aesthetic leanings, is liable to get into trouble, and I asked myself whether Carruthers had got into some difficulty to extricate himself from which the Embassy was the last place he could go to.
The idealist, I have noticed, is apt at times to be imprudent in the affairs of the flesh.
He sometimes finds love in places which the police inconveniently visit.
I tittered in my heart.
Even the gods laugh when a prig is caught in an equivocal situation.
Suddenly Carruthers said something that staggered me.
'I'm so desperately unhappy,' he muttered.
He said it without warning.
He obviously meant it.
There was in his tone a sort of gasp.
It might very well have been a sob.
I cannot describe what a shock it was to me to hear him say those words.
I felt as you do when you turn a corner of the street and on a sudden a great blast of wind meets you, takes your breath away, and nearly blows you off your feet.
It was so unexpected.
After all I hardly knew the fellow.
We were not friends.
I did not like him; he did not like me.
I have never looked on him as quite human.
It was amazing that a man so self-controlled, so urbane, accustomed to the usages of polite society, should break in upon a stranger with such a confession.
I am naturally reticent.
I should be ashamed, whatever I was suffering, to disclose my pain to another.
I shivered.
His weakness outraged me.
For a moment I was filled with a passion of anger.
How dared he thrust the anguish of his soul on me?
I very nearly cried:
'What the hell do I care?'
But I didn't.
He was sitting huddled up in the big arm-chair.
The solemn nobility of his features, which reminded one of the marble statue of a Victorian statesman, had strangely crumpled and his face sagged.
He looked almost as though he were going to cry.
I hesitated.
I faltered.
I had flushed when he spoke and now I felt my face go white.