His tone was firmer, and his bearing more in keeping with his character.

’If it be so, I presume that I, at least have liberty to speak.  When I find a gentleman, even one gifted with your eloquence of silence, playing the part of burglar, I think you will grant that a few words on my part cannot justly be considered to be out of place.’

Again he paused.  I could not but feel that he was employing the vehicle of somewhat cumbrous sarcasm to gain time, and to give himself the opportunity of recovering, if the thing was possible, his pristine courage.  That, for some cause wholly hidden from me, the mysterious utterance had shaken his nature to its deepest foundations, was made plainer by his endeavour to treat the whole business with a sort of cynical levity.

’To commence with, may I ask if you have come through London, or through any portion of it, in that costume,—­or, rather, in that want of costume?  It would seem out of place in a Cairene street,—­ would it not?—­even in the Rue de Rabagas,—­was it not the Rue de Rabagas?’

He asked the question with an emphasis the meaning of which was wholly lost on me.  What he referred to either then, or in what immediately followed, I, of course, knew no more than the man in the moon,—­though I should probably have found great difficulty in convincing him of my ignorance.

’I take it that you are a reminiscence of the Rue de Rabagas,—­ that, of course;—­is it not of course?  The little house with the blue-grey Venetians, and the piano with the F sharp missing?  Is there still the piano? with the tinny treble,—­indeed, the whole atmosphere, was it not tinny?—­You agree with me?—­I have not forgotten.  I am not even afraid to remember,—­you perceive it?’

A new idea seemed to strike him,—­born, perhaps, of my continued silence.

’You look English,—­is it possible that you are not English?  What are you then—­French?  We shall see!’

He addressed me in a tongue which I recognised as French, but with which I was not sufficiently acquainted to understand.  Although, I flatter myself that,—­as the present narrative should show—­I have not made an ill-use of the opportunities which I have had to improve my, originally, modest education, I regret that I have never had so much as a ghost of a chance to acquire an even rudimentary knowledge of any language except my own.  Recognising, I suppose, from my looks, that he was addressing me in a tongue to which I was a stranger, after a time he stopped, added something with a smile, and then began to talk to me in a lingo to which, in a manner of speaking, I was even stranger, for this time I had not the faintest notion what it was,—­it might have been gibberish for all that I could tell.  Quickly perceiving that he had succeeded no better than before, he returned to English.

’You do not know French?—­nor the patois of the Rue de Rabagas?  Very good,—­then what is it that you do know?  Are you under a vow of silence, or are you dumb,—­except upon occasion?  Your face is English,—­what can be seen of it, and I will take it, therefore, that English spoken words convey some meaning to your brain.  So listen, sir, to what I have to say,—­do me the favour to listen carefully.’