"It may not be a good plan generally, but this time it was all right,"
he said. "She spoke to me because she thought I could not see what
was going on across the street, and very kindly shared her better
position with me. I--" He hesitated. His name would mean nothing to
the man before him. Their worlds were very different worlds. It was
possible, however, that this gentle, shrinking creature, with a face
so spiritualized by life's denials that it shamed him as he looked,
knew more of his, Van Landing's, world than he of the blind man's, and
suddenly, as if something outside himself directed, he yielded to a
strange impulse.
It was true, what the child had said. He had few friends--that is,
friends in the sense the child meant. Of acquaintances he had many,
very many. At his club, in business, in a rather limited social set,
he knew a number of people well, but friends--If he were to die
to-morrow his going would occasion but the usual comment he had often
heard concerning others. Some years ago he had found himself
continually entertaining what he called his friends, spending foolish
sums of money on costly dinners, and quite suddenly he had quit.
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