Truly, had I asked myself the cause of a certain attraction I felt for Mr. Isaacs, it would have been hard to find an answer.  I am generally extremely shy of persons who begin an acquaintance by making confidences, and, in spite of Isaacs’ charm of manner, I had certainly speculated on his reasons for suddenly telling an entire stranger his whole story.  My southern birth had not modified the northern character born in me, though it gave me the more urbane veneer of the Italian; and the early study of Larochefoucauld and his school had not predisposed me to an unlimited belief in the disinterestedness of mankind.  Still there was something about the man which seemed to sweep away unbelief and cynicism and petty distrust, as the bright mountain freshet sweeps away the wretched little mud puddles and the dust and impurities from the bed of a half dry stream.  It was a new sensation and a novel era in my experience of humanity, and the desire to get behind that noble forehead, and see its inmost workings, was strong beyond the strength of puny doubts and preconceived prejudice.  Therefore, when Isaacs appeared, looking like the sun-god for all his quiet dress of gray and his unobtrusive manner, I felt the “little thrill of pleasure” so aptly compared by Swinburne to the soft touch of a hand stroking the outer hair.

“What a glorious day after all that detestable rain!” were his first words.  “Three mortal months of water, mud, and Mackintoshes, not to mention the agreeable sensation of being glued to a wet saddle with your feet in water-buckets, and mountain torrents running up and down the inside of your sleeves, in defiance of the laws of gravitation; such is life in the monsoon.  Pah!” And he threw himself down on a cane chair and stretched out his dainty feet, so that the sunlight through the crack of the half-closed door might fall comfortingly on his toes, and remind him that it was fine outside.

“What have you been doing all day?” I asked, for lack of a better question, not having yet recovered from the mental stagnation induced by the last number of the serial story I had been reading.

“Oh—­I don’t know.  Are you married?” he asked irrelevantly.

“God forbid!” I answered reverently, and with some show of feeling.

“Amen,” was the answer.  “As for me—­I am, and my wives have been quarreling.”

“Your wives!  Did I understand you to use the plural number?”

“Why, yes.  I have three; that is the worst of it.  If there were only two, they might get on better.  You know ’two are company and three are none,’ as your proverb has it.”  He said this reflectively, as if meditating a reduction in the number.

The application of the proverb to such a case was quite new in my recollection.  As for the plurality of my friend’s conjugal relations, I remembered he was a Mohammedan, and my surprise vanished.  Isaacs was lost in meditation.  Suddenly he rose to his feet, and took a cigarette from the table.