as though it was quite natural that we should become acquainted, in the tone your neighbour at dinner assumes, although you are unacquainted with his name.  We were on an exact level:  gentlemen, beyond fear or reproach.  I repeat emphatically, I liked Daker’s manner, for it was easy and polished, and it had—­which you don’t often get with much polish—­warmth.  I was attracted by his many attentions to his young wife.  Who could be near her, and not feel the chivalry in his soul warm to such a woman?  But Daker’s attentions were idiosyncrasies.  While he was talking to me at the cabin-door, he saw the fur coat slip, and readjusted it.  He divined when she wanted to move.  He fanned her; and she sought his eyes incessantly with the deep pure blue of hers, and slaked her ever-thirsty love with long, passionate gazing.  She took no notice of me:  he was all her world.

Daker was in an airy humour—­a man I thought without guile or care, passing away from England to happy connubial times along the enchanting shores which the Mediterranean bathes.  We fell, as fellow-travellers generally do, upon old stories of the ways of the world we had seen.  He had taken wider ranges than my duties had ever entailed on me.

Autumn was cooling to winter; it was early November when we met.

“I have been,” he said, “killing time and birds pleasantly enough in Sussex.”

Mrs. Daker overheard him, and smiled.  Then we shifted carelessly, as far as I was concerned, away.  He continued—­

“And now we’re off on the usual tramp.  My wife wants a warm winter, and so do I, for the matter of that.”

“Nice?” I asked.

A very decided “no” was the answer.

“I shall find some little sleepy Italian country-place, where we shall lay up like dormice, and just give King Frost the go-by for once.  Are you bound south?”

“Only to Paris—­as prosaic a journey as any cotton-spinner could desire.”

“Always plenty to be done in Paris,” Daker said; “at least I have never felt at a loss.  But it’s a bachelor’s paradise.”

“And a wife’s,” I interposed.

“Not a husband’s, you think?” Daker asked, turning the end of his moustache very tight.  “I agree with you.”

“I have no experience; but I have an opinion, which I have been at some pains to gather—­French society spoils our simple English women.”

“Most decidedly,” said Daker.

“They are too simple and too affectionate for the artificial, diplomatic—­shall I say heartless?—­society of the salons.  Their ears burn at first at the conversation.  They are presented to people who would barely be tolerated in the upper circles of South Bank, St. John’s Wood.”

“You are right; I know it well,” said Daker, very earnestly, but resuming his normal air of liveliness in an instant.  “It’s a bad atmosphere, but decidedly amusing.  The esprit of a good salon is delicious—­nothing short of it.  I like to bathe in it:  it just suits me, though I can’t contribute much to it.  We Englishmen are not alert enough in mind to hold our own against our nimble neighbours.  We shall never fence, nor dance, nor rally one another as they can.  We are men who don’t know how to be children.  It’s a great pity!”