The applause, this time rising to a furious pitch like the fall of a heavy body or the banging of doors, announced the close of the performance. The black-coated contingent leaving the doorways clear overflowed into the smaller salon, and as the company made their way in couples in the direction of the buffet, Leslie Wood approached us.
He shook hands with undemonstrative cordiality.
“An apparition! an apparition!” exclaimed Baron Moïse.
“Oh!” rejoined Wood, “one can’t reappear from any very remote quarter. The world is small.”
“Do you know what the Princess is saying about you, my dear Wood? She declares that you are nothing but a mystic. Now is that true?”
“Well it depends on what you mean by mystic.”
“The word is self-explanatory. A mystic is one who is preoccupied with the concerns of the next world. Now you are too well acquainted with the affairs of this world to trouble yourself about the next.”
At these words Wood slightly contracted his eyebrows.
“You are quite in the wrong, Moïse. The affairs of the other world are of far, far greater importance than those of the world we live in, Moïse.”
“What a man he is, this good Wood of ours!” exclaimed the Baron, with a sneer. “He is positively witty!”