They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the dining-room.  The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table seemed to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness.  The gloomy faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the walls were almost invisible.  The servants themselves, standing a little outside the halo of light, were like shadows passing swiftly and noiselessly back and forth.  At the far end of the room was an organ, and to the left a little balcony, built out as though for an orchestra.  Hamel looked about him almost in wonderment.  There was something curiously impressive in the size of the apartment and its emptiness.

“A trespasser,” Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyeglass, “that is what I have been, without a doubt.”

“But for your interest and consequent trespass,” Hamel remarked, “I should probably have found the roof off and the whole place in ruins.”

“Instead of which you found the door locked against you,” Mr. Fentolin pointed out.  “Well, we shall see.  I might, at any rate, have lost the opportunity of entertaining you here this evening.  I am particularly glad to have an opportunity of making you known to my niece and nephew.  I think you will agree with me that here are two young people who are highly to be commended.  I cannot offer them a cheerful life here.  There is little society, no gaiety, no sort of excitement.  Yet they never leave me.  They seem to have no other interest in life but to be always at my beck and call.  A case, Mr. Hamel, of really touching devotion.  If anything could reconcile me to my miserable condition, it would be the kindness and consideration of those by whom I am surrounded.”

Hamel murmured a few words of cordial agreement.  Yet he found himself, in a sense, embarrassed.  Gerald was looking down upon his plate and his face was hidden.  Esther’s features had suddenly become stony and expressionless.  Hamel felt instinctively that something was wrong.

“There are compensations,” Mr. Fentolin continued, with the air of one enjoying speech, “which find their way into even the gloomiest of lives.  As I lie on my back, hour after hour, I feel all the more conscious of this.  The world is a school of compensations, Mr. Hamel.  The interests—­the mental interests, I mean—­of unfortunate people like myself, come to possess in time a peculiar significance and to yield a peculiar pleasure.  I have hobbies, Mr. Hamel.  I frankly admit it.  Without my hobbies, I shudder to think what might become of me.  I might become a selfish, cruel, misanthropical person.  Hobbies are indeed a great thing.”

The brother and sister sat still in stony silence.  Hamel, looking across the little table with its glittering load of cut glass and silver and scarlet flowers, caught something in Esther’s eyes, so rarely expressive of any emotion whatever, which puzzled him.  He looked swiftly back at his host.  Mr. Fentolin’s face, at that moment, was like a beautiful cameo.  His expression was one of gentle benevolence.