‘His reticence was due,’ she continued, as if defying contradiction, ‘to a simple dislike to bore one with his personal affairs.’
‘Was it?’ I assented. My tone acknowledged with all humility that she was likely to know, and I did not deserve her doubtful glance.
‘He could not certainly,’ she went on, with firmer decision, ‘have been in the least ashamed of his connection with Kauffer.’
‘He comes from a country where social distinctions are less sharp than they are in this idiotic place,’ I observed.
‘Oh, if you think it is from any lack of recognition! His sensitiveness is beyond reason. He has met two or three men in the Military Department here—he was aware of the nicest shade of their patronage. But he does not care. To him life is more than a clerkship. He sees all round people like that. They are only figures in the landscape.’
‘Then,’ I said, ‘he is not at all concerned that nobody in this Capua of ours knows him, or cares anything about him, or has bought a scrap of his work, except our two selves.’
‘That’s a different matter. I have tried to rouse in him the feeling that it would be as well to be appreciated, even in Simla, and I think I’ve succeeded. He said, after those two men had gone away on Sunday, that he thought a certain reputation in the place where he lived would help anybody in his work.’
‘On Sunday? Do you mean between twelve and two?’
‘Yes, he came and made a formal call. There was no reason why he shouldn’t.’
‘Now that I think of it,’ I rejoined, ‘he shot a card on me too, at the Club. I was a little surprised. We didn’t seem somehow to be on those terms. One doesn’t readily associate him with any conventionality.’