“I do not want to give way,” he went on, “to a habit of morbid introspection, but socially I am a horrid failure.”
There was a little smile on the girl’s face, not caused by his grave humor. It would appear that she was smiling at something beyond that—something only visible to her own mental vision.
“Perhaps you do not try,” she suggested practically.
“Oh, yes, I do. I try in several languages. I have no small-talk.”
“You see,” she said gravely, “you are a large man.”
“Does that make any difference?” he asked simply.
She turned and looked at him as he towered by her side—looked at him with a queer smile.
“Yes,” she answered, “I think so.”
For some moments they remained thus without speaking—in a peaceful silence. Although the room was very large, it was peaceful. What is it, by the way, that brings peace to the atmosphere of a room, of a whole house sometimes? It can only be something in the individuality of some person in it. We talk glibly of the comfort of being settled—the peacefulness, the restfulness of it. Some people, it would appear, are always settled—of settled convictions, settled mind, settled purpose. Paul Howard Alexis was perhaps such a person.
At all events, the girl sitting in the low chair by his side seemed to be under some such influence, seemed to have escaped the unrest which is said to live in palaces.