So in a depressing silence the long dinner was eaten. Methodically and with velvet steps the footmen put dish after dish before him, the butler filled his rarely lifted glass, the whole ceremony of dining performed. For his own part he would have given much to have escaped after the fish had been served, and to have gone out and explored the garden which had excited Mr. Geary to such poetic thoughts. Not a large eater (for the East End does not dare to cultivate an appetite), he was easily satisfied; and he found the mere length of the menu to be an ordeal which he would gladly have been spared. Why did people want all these dishes, he asked himself. Why, in well-to-do circles, is it considered necessary to serve precisely similar portions of fish and flesh and fowl every night at eight o'clock? Men who work eat when they are disposed. Alban wondered what would happen if such a custom were introduced into the House of the Five Gables. A cynical reverie altogether--from which the butler's purring voice awakened him. "Will you have your coffee in the Winter Garden, sir? Mr. Gessner always does." "Cannot I have it in the garden?" "Oh, yes, if you like, sir. We'll carry out a chair--the seats are very damp at night, sir." Alban smiled. Was he not sleeping on the reeking floor of the caves but twenty hours ago. CHAPTER IX ANNA GESSNER They set a table in the vestibule overlooking the trim lawn, and thither they carried cigars and coffee. Alban had learned to smoke fiercely--one of the few lessons the East End had taught him thoroughly--and Richard Gessner's cigars had a just reputation among all who frequented the House of the Five Gables--some of these, it must be confessed, coming here for no other particular reason than to smoke them. Alban did not quite understand what it was that differentiated this particular cigar from any he had ever smoked, but he enjoyed it thoroughly and inhaled every whiff of its fragrant bouquet as though it had been a perfume of morning-roses.