He ate well, if simply, and treated himself to a small bottle of a
noted champagne. At half-past seven, meaning to give Devar ten
minutes' grace, he ordered coffee and a glass of green Chartreuse. As
a time-killer, there is no liqueur more potent, but, regarded in the
light of subsequent occurrences, it would be hard to say exactly how
far the cunning monkish decoction helped in determining his wayward
actions. Undoubtedly, some fantastic influence carried him beyond
those bounds of calm self-possession within which everyone who knew
John Delancy Curtis would have expected to find him. His subsequent
light-headedness, his placid acceptance of a mad romance as the one
thing that was inevitable, his ready yielding to impulse, his no less
stubborn refusal to return to the beaten path of common sense--these
unlikely traits in a character gifted with the New England dourness of
purpose can only be explained, if at all, as arising from some
unsuspected hereditary streak of knight-errantry brought into sudden
and exotic life by the good wines of France.
Be that as it may, at twenty minutes to eight he paid what he owed,
lighted a cigar, donned his hat, and, still carrying the overcoat, was
walking to the office to leave word about the key, when his attention
was attracted by the peculiar behavior of the man who had pushed
against him at the cigar counter.
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