my youth was then very acute); revealed with something peculiarly intimate in the conviction, as if she were young exactly in the same way in which I felt myself young; and that therefore no misunderstanding between us was possible and there could be nothing more for us to know about each other.  Of course this sensation was momentary, but it was illuminating; it was a light which could not last, but it left no darkness behind.  On the contrary, it seemed to have kindled magically somewhere within me a glow of assurance, of unaccountable confidence in myself:  a warm, steady, and eager sensation of my individual life beginning for good there, on that spot, in that sense of solidarity, in that seduction.

CHAPTER II

For this, properly speaking wonderful, reason I was the only one of the company who could listen without constraint to the unbidden guest with that fine head of white hair, so beautifully kept, so magnificently waved, so artistically arranged that respect could not be felt for it any more than for a very expensive wig in the window of a hair-dresser.  In fact, I had an inclination to smile at it.  This proves how unconstrained I felt.  My mind was perfectly at liberty; and so of all the eyes in that room mine was the only pair able to look about in easy freedom.  All the other listeners’ eyes were cast down, including Mills’ eyes, but that I am sure was only because of his perfect and delicate sympathy.  He could not have been concerned otherwise.

The intruder devoured the cutlets—­if they were cutlets.  Notwithstanding my perfect liberty of mind I was not aware of what we were eating.  I have a notion that the lunch was a mere show, except of course for the man with the white hair, who was really hungry and who, besides, must have had the pleasant sense of dominating the situation.  He stooped over his plate and worked his jaw deliberately while his blue eyes rolled incessantly; but as a matter of fact he never looked openly at any one of us.  Whenever he laid down his knife and fork he would throw himself back and start retailing in a light tone some Parisian gossip about prominent people.

He talked first about a certain politician of mark.  His “dear Rita” knew him.  His costume dated back to ’48, he was made of wood and parchment and still swathed his neck in a white cloth; and even his wife had never been seen in a low-necked dress.  Not once in her life.  She was buttoned up to the chin like her husband.  Well, that man had confessed to him that when he was engaged in political controversy, not on a matter of principle but on some special measure in debate, he felt ready to kill everybody.