interior contemplation they flashed outward. He was looking at me; for the first time I had that feeling completely—that he was looking at me, a hard, profound, startled stare.
Then, before I could make a movement, a gesture of protest, he had risen to his feet. "Good-night," he said, brusquely, and he had shuffled out of the room.
For three days he did not appear. I had hurt him, insulted him. I waited for him, with a desire for reparation. Yet when he finally came I saw that I was mistaken. There was no resentment, absolutely none, in his manner as he shuffled up to the table and sat down. But before even the usual green poison had been set before him he had drawn from his breast pocket a square piece of cardboard and had thrown it to me.
I looked at it stupidly, at first without comprehension. Then the whole thing flashed upon me in an understanding so sudden, so complete, so profound, that it simply dazed me, left me there inert between two extraordinary and conflicting desires to laugh and weep—laugh, extravagantly, madly; weep, with the same abandon, thoroughly, humidly, sentimentally.
It was an answer to my question. And it was a picture. A picture of himself—I recognised the fine,
