No!
One quickly discovered that the journalist was not at all that kind of host.
At dinner, where some men become bright and gay and inconsequential, this man became serious.
The food part of the affair bored him.
Watching him and studying him with that inner eye that makes the bliss of solitude, one saw he didn't care a bit about food, and still less about wine. It wouldn't have mattered to him how bad the dinner was. He wouldn't know. He couldn't think about it. For he was something more than your bon viveur and your social animal, this man with his wide grey eyes and the flopping lock on his broad forehead. He was the dreamer of dreams as well as the journalist. And at dinner he dreamed—Oh, yes, indeed, he dreamed tremendously. It was all the same to him whether or not he ate pâté de fois gras, or fowl bouillé, or sausage. He was rapt in his discussion with the Belgian Doctor on his right.
Anæsthetics and antiseptics,—that's what they are talking about so hard.
And suddenly out comes a piece of paper.
The journalist wants to send a telegram to England.
"I'm going to try and get Doctor X. to come out here. He's a very clever chap. He can go into the thing thoroughly. It's important. It must be gone into."
And there, on the white cloth, scribbled on the back of a menu, he writes out his telegram.