Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/189

   he was absorbing the warmth of fires which no longer kindled on his own hearth. At any rate, he was eagerly receptive of this spectacle, repellant to me in its unfitness, and was drinking it with parted lips, a tinge of color in his hollow cheeks, a deep glow in his red-brown eyes. There was nothing malicious in his regard; rather, it was the acme of benevolence. He caught my eye and smiled as he had done the day before.

"The dinner, which was elaborate, completed, we adjourned to the quarter-deck, where the Count skilfully drew me into a discussion regarding racial and tribal peculiarities, and I soon found him savant. Soon, and to-day I know that it was by express design, I became oblivious to our milieu and harked back to the era when my science was in its infancy, for although myself but a mere collector of those rare things in which science properly interests herself, I hold the greatest respect for the founders of my craft, who were themselves both scientists and collectors. [ 173 ]