I was still more or less vaguely ruminating him, in a corner of the smoking-room, on that first evening, when I became aware that he was standing near me.  As I looked up, our eyes met, and for the fraction of a second fixed each other.  It was barely the fraction of a second, but it was time enough for the transmission of a message.  I knew as certainly as if he had said so that he wanted to speak, to break the ice, to scrape an acquaintance; I knew that he had approached me and was loitering in my neighbourhood for that specific purpose.  I don’t know, I have studied the psychology of the moment in vain to understand, why I felt a perverse impulse to put him off.  I was interested in him, I was curious about him; and there he stood, testifying that the interest was reciprocal, ready to make the advances, only waiting for a glance or a motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette smoke.  I suppose it was the working of some obscure mannish vanity—­of what in a woman would have defined itself as coyness and coquetry.  If he wanted to speak—­well, let him speak; I wouldn’t help him.  I could realise the processes of his mind even more clearly than those of my own—­his desire, his hesitancy.  He was too timid to leap the barriers; I must open a gate for him.  He hovered near me for a minute longer, and then drifted away.  I felt his disappointment, his spiritual shrug of the shoulders; and I perceived rather suddenly that I was disappointed myself.  I must have been hoping all along that he would speak quand meme, and now I was moved to run after him, to call him back.  That, however, would imply a consciousness of guilt, an admission that my attitude had been intentional; so I kept my seat, making a mental rendezvous with him for the morrow.

Between my Irish vis-a-vis Flaherty and myself there existed no such strain.  He presently sauntered up to me, and dropped into conversation as easily as if we had been old friends.

‘Well, and are you here for your health or your entertainment?’ he began.  ’But I don’t need to ask that of a man who’s drinking black coffee and smoking tobacco at this hour of the night.  I’m the only invalid at our end of the table, and I’m no better than an amateur meself.  It’s a barrister’s throat I have—­I caught it waiting for briefs in me chambers at Doblin.’

We chatted together for a half-hour or so, and before we parted he had given me a good deal of general information—­about the town, the natives, the visitors, the sands, the golf-links, the hunting, and, with the rest, about our neighbours at table.