"
"Irrespective of nationality?" Francis queried.
"Absolutely. I have never minded much of what race--I have the
trick of tongues rather strangely developed--but I like the
feeling of human beings around me. I like the smell and sound
and atmosphere of a great city. Then all my senses are awake,
but life becomes almost turgid in my veins during the dreary
hours of passing from one place to another."
"Do you rule out scenery as well as sport from amongst the joys
of travel?" Francis enquired.
"I am ashamed to make such a confession," his host answered, "but
I have never lingered for a single unnecessary moment to look at
the most wonderful landscape in the world. On the other hand, I
have lounged for hours in the narrowest streets of Pekin, in the
markets of Shanghai, along Broadway in New York, on the
boulevards in Paris, outside the Auditorium in Chicago. These
are the obvious places where humanity presses the thickest, but I
know of others. Some day we will talk of them."
Francis, too, although that evening, through sheer lack of
sympathy, he refused to admit it, shared to some extent
Hilditch's passionate interest in his fellow-creatures, and
notwithstanding the strange confusion of thought into which he
had been thrown during the last twenty-four hours, he felt
something of the pungency of life, the thrill of new and
appealing surroundings, as he sat in his high-backed chair,
sipping his wonderful wine, eating almost mechanically what was
set before him, fascinated through all his being by his strange
company.
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