By one of those odd coincidents which sometimes start one to thinking, the Celebrity was the subject of a lively discussion when I reached the table that evening.  I had my quota of information concerning his European trip, but I did not commit myself when appealed to for an opinion.  I had once known the man (which, however, I did not think it worth while to mention) and I did not feel justified in criticising him in public.  Besides, what I knew of him was excellent, and entirely apart from the literary merit or demerit of his work.  The others, however, were within their right when they censured or praised him, and they did both.  Farrar, in particular, surprised me by the violence of his attacks, while Miss Trevor took up the Celebrity’s defence with equal ardor.  Her motives were beyond me now.  The Celebrity’s works spoke for themselves, she said, and she could not and would not believe such injurious reports of one who wrote as he did.

The next day I went over to the county-seat, and got back to Asquith after dark.  I dined alone, and afterwards I was strolling up and down one end of the long veranda when I caught sight of a lonely figure in a corner, with chair tilted back and feet on the rail.  A gleam of a cigar lighted up the face, and I saw that it was Farrar.  I sat down beside him, and we talked commonplaces for a while, Farrar’s being almost monosyllabic, while now and again feminine voices and feminine laughter reached our ears from the far end of the porch.  They seemed to go through Farrar like a knife, and he smoked furiously, his lips tightly compressed the while.  I had a dozen conjectures, none of which I dared voice.  So I waited in patience.

“Crocker,” said he, at length, “there’s a man here from Boston, Charles Wrexell Allen; came this morning.  You know Boston.  Have you ever heard of him?”

“Allen,” I repeated, reflecting; “no Charles Wrexell.”

“It is Charles Wrexell, I think,” said Farrar, as though the matter were trivial.  “However, we can go into the register and make sure.”

“What about him?” I asked, not feeling inclined to stir.

The Celebrity

“Oh, nothing.  An arrival is rather an occurrence, though.  You can hear him down there now,” he added, tossing his head towards the other end of the porch, “with the women around him.”

In fact, I did catch the deeper sound of a man’s voice among the lighter tones, and the voice had a ring to it which was not wholly unfamiliar, although I could not place it.

I threw Farrar a bait.

“He must make friends easily,” I said.

“With the women?—­yes,” he replied, so scathingly that I was forced to laugh in spite of myself.

“Let us go in and look at the register,” I suggested.  “You may have his name wrong.”

We went in accordingly.  Sure enough, in bold, heavy characters, was the name Charles Wrexell Allen written out in full.  That handwriting was one in a thousand.  I made sure I had seen it before, and yet I did not know it; and the more I puzzled over it the more confused I became.  I turned to Farrar.