At last, long after eleven, appeared the new-comer of whom I had heard so much. I must confess that my preconceived notions (one always has a preconceived notion of the appearance of a person one has heard much spoken of) fell to the ground. I had imagined him dark and audacious, and I saw before me a tall, big, well-built man, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, fair of skin, with a blonde beard and moustache, lank long hair, a finely-cut, firm-set mouth, and blue dreamy eyes, altogether a somewhat Christ-like face. He was clad in a thick, heavy, old-fashioned blue overcoat with a velvet collar, which he refused to remove, baggy nondescript trousers, and uncouth-looking boots. He saluted his host and hostess in an undemonstrative style, bowed awkwardly to the other guests, and settled down to crouch over the fire, and look unostentatiously miserable. From the first moment Kosinski interested me. His manners were not engaging; towards women especially he was decidedly hostile. But the marked indifference to opinion which his bearing indicated, his sincerity, his unmistakable moral courage, perhaps his evident aversion to my sex, all had for me a certain fascination. I felt attracted towards the man, and was pleased that a discussion on Anarchism with Armitage at last afforded me an opportunity of exchanging a few words with him--even though on his side the conversation was not altogether flattering to myself. It happened in this way. Nekrovitch, Armitage, and myself had, according to our wont, been discussing the great Anarchist question. For the hundredth time the Russian had endeavoured to persuade us of the truth and the reason of his point of view. "So long as men are men," he maintained, "there must be some sort of government, some fixed recognised law--organisation, if you will, to control them." "All governments are equally bad," answered the doctor. "All law is coercion, and coercion is immoral. Immoral conditions breed immoral people. In a free and enlightened society there would be no room for coercive law. Crime will disappear when healthy and natural conditions prevail." And Nekrovitch, perceiving for the hundredth time that his arguments were vain, and that Armitage was not to be moved, had left us to ourselves and gone across to his other guests. Doctor Armitage, always eager for converts, turned his undivided attention to me. "I hope yet to be able to claim you for a comrade," he said: "you are intelligent and open-minded, and cannot fail to see the futility of attempting to tinker up our worn-out society. You must see that our Socialist friends have only seized on half-truths, and they stop short where true reform should begin."