“Would truth be any good to you?”
“I shouldn’t like to say,” I answered, cautiously. “It’s said that truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Who says that?” he mouthed.
“Oh! Nobody in particular.”
I turned to the window; for the contemptuous beggar was oppressive to look at, with his immovable arm on the table. I suppose my unceremonious manner provoked him to a comparatively long speech.
“Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks? Like plums in a slice of cold pudding.”
I was looking at them—an acre or more of black dots scattered on the steel-grey shades of the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey mist with a formless brighter patch in one place—the veiled whiteness of the cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and desolate, a symphony in grey and black—a Whistler. But the next thing said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went on—
“I—no such foolishness—looking at the rocks out there—more likely call to mind an office—I used to look in sometimes at one time—office in London—one of them small streets behind Cannon Street Station. . . ”
He was very deliberate; not jerky, only fragmentary; at times profane.
“That’s a rather remote connection,” I observed, approaching him.