At the end of a period my host returned, and without apology or explanation resumed his seat and took up his remarks where he had left them.

The girl disappeared somewhere between the table and the sitting room.  Old Man Hooper offered me a cigar, and sat down deliberately to entertain me.  I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was also amusing himself, as though I were being played with and covertly sneered at.  Hooper’s politeness and suavity concealed, and well concealed, a bitter irony.  His manner was detached and a little precise.  Every few moments he burst into a flurry of activity with the fly whacker, darting here and there as his eyes fell upon one of the insects; but returning always calmly to his discourse with an air of never having moved from his chair.  He talked to me of Praxiteles, among other things.  What should an Arizona cowboy know of Praxiteles? and why should any one talk to him of that worthy Greek save as a subtle and hidden expression of contempt?  That was my feeling.  My senses and mental apperceptions were by now a little on the raw.

That, possibly, is why I noticed the very first chirp of another frog outside.  It continued, and I found myself watching my host covertly.  Sure enough, after a few repetitions I saw subtle signs of uneasiness, of divided attention; and soon, again without apology or explanation, he glided from the room.  And at the same instant the old Mexican servitor came and pretended to fuss with the lamps.

My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, but I could guess no means of satisfying it.  Like the bedroom, this parlour gave out only on the interior court.  The flash of lanterns against the ceiling above reached me.  All I could do was to wander about looking at the objects in the cabinet and the pictures on the walls.  There was, I remember, a set of carved ivory chessmen and an engraving of the legal trial of some English worthy of the seventeenth century.  But my hearing was alert, and I thought to hear footsteps outside.  At any rate, the chirp of the frog came to an abrupt end.

Shortly my host returned and took up his monologue.  It amounted to that.  He seemed to delight in choosing unusual subjects and then backing me into a corner with an array of well-considered phrases that allowed me no opening for reply nor even comment.  In one of my desperate attempts to gain even a momentary initiative I asked him, apropos of the piano, whether his daughter played.

“Do you like music?” he added, and without waiting for a reply seated himself at the instrument.

He played to me for half an hour.  I do not know much about music; but I know he played well and that he played good things.  Also that, for the first time, he came out of himself, abandoned himself to feeling.  His close-cropped head swayed from side to side; his staring, wildcat eyes half closed——­

He slammed shut the piano and arose, more drily precise than ever.