was more than that:  it was anticipation, apprehension in it somewhere.  The man was nervous, uneasy.  His restless way of suddenly looking about him proved it.  Henriot tried every one else in the room as well; but, though his thought settled on others too, he always came back to the figure of this solitary being opposite, who ate his dinner as if afraid of being seen, and glanced up sometimes as if fearful of being watched.  Henriot’s curiosity, before he knew it, became suspicion.  There was mystery here.  The table, he noticed, was laid for two.

“Is he an actor, a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—­a crank?” was the thought that first occurred to him.  And the question suggested itself without amusement.  The impression of subterfuge and caution he conveyed left his observer unsatisfied.

The face was clean shaven, dark, and strong; thick hair, straight yet bushy, was slightly unkempt; it was streaked with grey; and an unexpected mobility when he smiled ran over the features that he seemed to hold rigid by deliberate effort.  The man was cut to no quite common measure.  Henriot jumped to an intuitive conclusion:  “He’s not here for pleasure or merely sight-seeing.  Something serious has brought him out to Egypt.”  For the face combined too ill-assorted qualities:  an obstinate tenacity that might even mean brutality, and was certainly repulsive, yet, with it, an undecipherable dreaminess betrayed by lines of the mouth, but above all in the very light blue eyes, so rarely raised.  Those eyes, he felt, had looked upon unusual things; “dreaminess” was not an adequate description; “searching” conveyed it better.  The true source of the queer impression remained elusive.  And hence, perhaps, the incongruous marriage in the face—­mobility laid upon a matter-of-fact foundation underneath.  The face showed conflict.

And Henriot, watching him, felt decidedly intrigued.  “I’d like to know that man, and all about him.”  His name, he learned later, was Richard Vance; from Birmingham; a business man.  But it was not the Birmingham he wished to know; it was the—­other:  cause of the elusive, dreamy searching.  Though facing one another at so short a distance, their eyes, however, did not meet.  And this, Henriot well knew, was a sure sign that he himself was also under observation.  Richard Vance, from Birmingham, was equally taking careful note of Felix Henriot, from London.

Thus, he could wait his time.  They would come together later.  An opportunity would certainly present itself.  The first links in a curious chain had already caught; soon the chain would tighten, pull as though by chance, and bring their lives into one and the same circle.  Wondering in particular for what kind of a companion the second cover was laid, Henriot felt certain that their eventual coming together was inevitable.  He possessed this kind of divination from first impressions, and not uncommonly it proved correct.