"I will ask your opinion upon that wine, Captain Rames," he said, and so turned again to Henry Smale.
"You see, he noticed at once," said Sir James.
Captain Rames had noticed something too. At the mention of his name, Henry Smale had looked up with interest. He was even now obviously asking a question of Mr. Benoliel about him. Rames began to take more careful stock of his host. Mr. Benoliel was a tall, high-shouldered man, with a dark thin face in which delicacy seemed to predominate over strength. His hair was black, and a little black moustache drew a pencil line along his upper lip. His fingers were long and extraordinarily restless. It was difficult to make a guess at his age. A first glance would put him in the forties. But when Mr. Benoliel showed his eyes--which was not always, for he had a trick of looking out between lids half-closed--it seemed that he must have lived for centuries; so much of fatigue and so much of patience were suddenly revealed.
"I wonder why he asked me to dine here," said Harry Rames.
"You were certain to dine here," replied Sir James.
"I met him but the once by the purest accident."
"You were certain to meet him," said Sir James. "All famous people meet him. All famous people dine here once. But he is not really a snob. For, quite a number of them are never invited twice."
"He can be a good friend?"
"Of that I cannot speak," said Sir James.
The courses followed one after the other, and Harry Rames found his eyes continually wandering back across the silver and bright flowers to the exotic figure of his host. He took his share in the conversation about him, but a movement of Mr. Benoliel would check him in his speech or cause him to listen with an absent ear. He watched the play of his delicate fingers upon the table-cloth, the continual restlessness of his body. Mr. Benoliel was of his race; there was in his aspect a queer mixture of the financier and the dilettante, the shrewd business man and the sensuous apprecitator of art. There was a touch, too, of the feminine in him.