Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/63

Rh day's work, Hastings was suddenly aroused by a knock at the door, and informed by the servant-maid that a gentleman had come to see him, and was waiting downstairs. He followed her heedlessly to the drawing-room, where the gaunt and infrequent furniture looked more than ordinarily characterless and dingy in the one flaring gas-jet that she had evidently just lit. He expected some of his propagandist friends—he did not, in that dreary humour, care to guess which. He found himself face to face with Jack Daniel.

For some moments they stood and looked at one another, motionless and in silence, each recognising how much, and yet (in some way) how little, the other had changed; and then Hastings heaved a deep sigh, and turned his head away.

'Gerald, old man,' said the well-known voice, with just the old musical inflection, 'can't you trust me?'

Hastings looked at him quickly.

The soft, intensely black hair waved round the olive-hued face with its soft, intensely black eyes, full of a kindly, fearless, and simple sincerity, just as of old. The smiling self-security of the beautifully moulded lips and chin was not hid by the slight dark moustache. The physical charm of him, that something which had captivated the English pagan