The doctor’s seamed face, sour and ironic, made it impossible to know whether his expression was one of undisguised boredom, or only his show of conventional politeness.  I began to feel I had broken into the intimacy of two men whose minds were dissimilar, but friendly through old associations, and that the doctor’s finer wit was reproving me for an intrusion.  So I rose, and asked indifferently what sort of a place was Tabacol.  Had he been there before?

“Never,” said the doctor, “nor is it the kind of place one wishes to see twice.  We were kept at Tabacol because so many of our men were down with fever.  It is a little distance up the Pondurucu River . . . maybe two hundred miles.  Did you say. . . ?  No.  It is not really out of the way.  An ocean steamer calls at Tabacol once a month or six weeks.  It is only on the edge of what romantic people call the unknown.”

It was evident he thought I could be one of the romantic.  He looked at me for the first time, twisting the cord of his eyeglass with his finger and thumb in a fastidious way, and I thought his glance was to dissipate some doubt he had that he ought to be speaking to me at all.  He dropped the cord suddenly as if letting go his reserve, and said slyly, with a grave smile:  “Perhaps the romantic think the unknown is worth looking into because it may be better than what they know.  At Tabacol I used to think the unknown country beyond it looked even duller than usual.  There was a forest, a river, a silence, and it was either day or night.  That was all.  If the voice of Nature is the voice of God. . . .”

The landlord was observing in surprise this conversational excursion by his old friend, as if it were altogether new to him.  He laughed aloud, and, putting a consoling hand on his friend’s shoulder as he rose, he told us he must leave us for a few minutes, for he had business.  “Look more cheerful before I get back, Doctor.”

The doctor chuckled, and stretched across to give his gloves a more satisfactory position on his hat.  “I don’t understand what it can be that attracts people to such a place.  Young men, maybe yourself even, wish to go there.  Isn’t that so?  Yes.  I’ve met such men in such places.  Then they did not give me the impression that they were satisfied with their romance.  Impossible, of course.  Romance is never in the place unless we put it there, and who would put even a sentimental dream into such a hole as Tabacol?  Tropical squalor.  Broken people!  I’ve never seen romance in such a place, and don’t expect to. . . .”

Several cabs, on their way to a ship outward bound, made an increasing noise in the night, rattled by on the cobbles outside, their occupants roaring a sentimental chorus, and drowned what the doctor was saying.