Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/390

 the Roman pension, it did not greatly surprise him to have Livingstone knock at the door and step in. Livingstone had been at that pension before, during Neale's first leisurely sauntering visit to Rome; Livingstone had turned up at the pension in Florence before Neale left; he had run across Livingstone in a Paris café sitting alone at a table, looking as much like an attaché of the Embassy as he could manage. Livingstone was no tourist but one of the professional inhabitants of Europe; an American, that much he admitted, though neither hints nor direct British questioning had ever extracted from him his birthplace in the States. He was the sort of man who had learned how to cross his long thin legs elegantly so that the toe of one slim foot pointed downward. As at the same time he was wont to fold his arms over his hollowed chest, stoop his shoulders and droop his neck, and as he wore gray gaiters and carried a walking stick he had good reason to flatter himself that he had altogether the distinguished, pinched, sickly, aristocratic look of the traditional promising young-old diplomat. Neale was not surprised to see him in Rome. He would not have been surprised to see him anywhere—except perhaps at work. It was Neale's guess that three or four years from now he would have screwed up his courage to wearing a monocle.

"Hello, Crittenden," he said, "it is you, is it? When Michele told me you had turned up again, I was sure he must be mistaken. I understood you were on the high seas, on your way back to the land of the free and the home of bad cooking."

Without being invited, he sank down in a chair to watch Neale unpack and wash, asking, "You were going back to New York, weren't you?"

"Yes, I still am. I'm only in Rome for five days. But I won't be long in the States. I'll be on my way to China and the East."

Livingstone was mildly interested. "You don't say so! Well, you might really get there by starting off to New York. But I admit I don't see the connection. Why don't you take a P. and O. for India?"