“Have you been long in X———?”
“Three days.”
“For heaven’s sake, what have you found to keep you here three days?”
“I am a painter. The town is paintable.”
“Still life! Nature morte!” he cried. “It is the dullest little town in Christendom. But I’m glad you are a painter. I am a musician—a fiddler.”
“I suspected we were of the same ilk,” said I.
“Did you, though? That was shrewd. But I, too, seemed to scent a kindred soul.”
“Here is my card. If we’re not beheaded in the morning, I hope we may see more of each other,” I went on, warming up.
He took my card, and, by the light of a match struck for the occasion, read aloud, “Mr. Arthur Wainwright,” pronouncing the English name without difficulty. “I have no card, but my name is Sebastian Roch.”
“You speak English?” was my inference. “Oh, yes, I speak a kind of English,” he confessed, using the tongue in question. He had scarcely a trace of a foreign accent.