Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/230

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS wondered the more that I had never met him, had I not seen his name figuring in those society lists that were quite alien to my quiet round of life. But at dinner we were at the same table. He was good enough to make the advance, and to claim a whimsical consanguinity on the score of our Clarentian prenomina. Now, I knew that he was a famous government geodeticist, but had no conception of his temperament. Perhaps he took me with equal seriousness. At all events, he was more on his dignity, or gravity, than I ever afterward saw him. In the starry evening we walked the deck together, and talked of public affairs, books, etc., soon wandering to scientific research and discovery, concerning which I eagerly listened to his theories of matter, vortex rings, the Earth's structure, the chances of a future life. I doubt if there was a laugh between us, and am sure that I never again found him so long in one humor. Nor was there anything in this thorough-bred, travel-dressed, cosmopolitan to suggest that he had not spent repeated seasons upon the hemisphere to which we were bound.

Out on the blue, the next morning, what a transformation! As I have said, it was in fact King's first opportunity to visit Europe, strictly off duty, and with means that seemed to him beyond the dreams of avarice. He broke out into a thousand pranks and paradoxes. Freedom was what we both needed, and my own reserve was at an end the moment I saw him changed from the dignitary to a veritable Prince Florizel with the tray of tarts, offering lollipops right [216]