"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone to-night. It's Christmas eve, you know—or perhaps you've been more or less glad to forget it?"
The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four hours before. Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed, brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes, his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one.
The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already given him by Prosper. He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to devour like a beast. Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. The face of the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not think it so.
Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on the face of his host, all swam before him. Looking frankly at Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner:
"I give it up. I can't—it's not to be made out or understood..."
"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be? For from the moment you first spoke——"
The young man nodded. "I'm a gentleman. It's worse somehow—I don't know why, but it is."
Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places to which you feel you will never return. Only," he quickly offered, "in your case you must, you know, go back."
"No," said the young man, quietly.
There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other could not press it.