"Oh, do come, Sir Robert," said the vicar, with manifest pleasure. "Are you going to be away from England for long?"
"I have leave from the British Museum for a year," said the Professor. "My doctor says that I require absolute rest. I am en route for Marseilles and from there to Alexandria."
The Pannier d'Or proved a pleasant little place, and the dinner was excellent. The Professor surprised and then amused the others by his criticism of the viands. He made the dinner his especial business, sent for the cook and had a serious conversation with him, chose the wines with extreme care.
His knowledge of the culinary art was enormous, and he treated it with a kind of reverence, addressing himself more particularly to Helena.
"Yes, Miss Byars, you must be most careful in the preparation of really good crayfish soup. This is excellent. The great secret is to flavour with a little lobster spawn and to mix the crumb of a French roll with the stock—white stock of course—before you add the powdered shells and anchovies."
Many times, despite his impatience to get to deeper and more congenial subjects, the vicar smiled at the purring of this gourmet, who seemed to prefer a sauce to an inscription and rissoles to research.
But with the special coffee—covered with fine yellow foam and sweetened with crystals of amber sugar—the vicar's hour came. Sir Robert realised that it was inevitable and with a half sigh gave the required opening.
Once started, his manner changed utterly. The mask of materialism peeled away from his face, which became younger, brighter, as thought animated it, and new, finer lines cames out upon it as knowledge poured from him.
The conversation threatened to be a long one. Spence saw that and proposed to go on to the Casino with Helena, leaving the two clergymen with Llwellyn. It was when they had gone that the trio settled down completely.
It resolved itself at first into a duologue between the two elder men. Gortre's knowledge was too general and superficial on these purely antiquarian matters to allow him to take much part in it. He sat sipping his coffee and listening with keen attention and great enjoyment to this talk of experts. He had not liked Llwellyn from the first and could not do so even now, but he was forced to recognise the enormous intellectual activity and power of the big, purring creature before him.