At about tea time, Mr. Karslake, faultlessly arrayed, ambled in, selected a table diagonally across the room from the caisse, exchanged pleasantries with the waiter who served him a picon, and used a copy of The Evening Standard & St. James’s Gazette as a cover for his wistful admiration of Sofia.

Presently he was joined by a gentleman twice his age, if not older, whose conservative smartness was such that one wondered if he hadn’t strayed out of bounds through inadvertence.  One would have thought his place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament.  On the other hand, there wasn’t a trace of self-importance in his habit, it achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity of a decent self-esteem.

Sofia tried to fix what it was that made her think him the handsomest man she had ever seen.  She failed.  He wasn’t at all handsome in the smug fashion associated with the popular interpretation of that term; his features were engagingly irregular of conformation, but the impression they conveyed was of a singular strength together with as rare a fineness of spirit.  A mobile and expressive face, stamped with a history of strange ordeals; but this must not be interpreted as meaning that it was haggard or prematurely aged; on the contrary, it had youthful colour and was but lightly scored with wrinkles, its sole confession of advancing years was in the gray at either temple.  The eyes, perhaps, told more than anything else of trials endured and memories that would never rest.

Once they had looked into hers (but that came later) Sofia was sure she would never forget those eyes.  And as she saw them then, she never did forget them.  But the next time she saw them she did not know them at all.

The newcomer hailed Mr. Karslake by his name (which was the first time Sofia had heard it), sat down on the wall-seat beside him and, when the waiter came, desired an absinthe.

He had used two languages already, English to Karslake, French to the waiter; Sofia understood both and spoke them to perfection.  So it was rather exasperating when, his absinthe having been served and the customary platitudes passed on the weather and their respective states of health, the conversation was continued in a tongue with which Sofia was not only unacquainted but which sounded like none she had ever heard spoken.  This seemed the more annoying because there were few people in the restaurant to drown with chatter the sound of those two voices and because, in spite of their guarded tones, their table was one so situated that some freak of acoustics carried every syllable uttered at it, even though whispered, to the quick ears at the cashier’s desk.  A circumstance which had treated Sofia to many a moment of covert entertainment and not a few that threatened to shatter what slender illusions had survived eighteen years of Mama Therese.  But nobody else (with the possible exception of the last) was acquainted with this secret of the restaurant, and Sofia was careful never to mention it.