“Go away. No fellow has a right to be as cool as you look. Go quite away. I feel like the three fellows in the Bible who sang in the furnace. How can you jest, Lomas? I have no affections. I cannot love, to bet I am ashamed. I always win. Half-crowns. Why is the world thus, Lomas?” “My dear fellow, you’re not yourself. You look quite professional.” Reggie Fortune groaned. “I am. This place worries me. I am anatomical, ethnological, anthropological.” “Good Gad,” said Lomas. “Yes. A distressing place, look at it”; he waved a stick. The people in the Royal Enclosure were as pleasant to behold as usual. Comely girls and women who had been comely passed in frocks of which many were pretty and few garish; their men were of a blameless, inconspicuous uniformity. “What is he?” said Reggie Fortune. “I ask you. Look at his feet.” What Lomas saw was a man dressed like all the rest of them and as well set up, but of a darker complexion. He did not see anything remarkable. “The big fellow?” he said. “He is a little weak at the knee. But what’s the matter with him?” “Who is he?” said Reggie Fortune. Lomas shrugged. “Not English, of course. Rather a half-caste colour, isn’t he? From one of the smaller legations, I suppose, Balkan or South American.” He waved a hand to some elegant aliens who were at that moment kissing ladies’ hands with florid grace. “They all come here, you know.” “I don’t know,” said Reggie Fortune peevishly. “Half-caste? Half what caste? Look at his feet.” Now the man’s feet, well displayed beneath white spats, were large and flat but distinguished by their heels, which stuck out behind extravagantly. “That is the negro heel.” “My dear Fortune! The fellow is no more a negro than I am,” Lomas protested: and indeed the man’s hair was straight and sleek and he had a good enough nose, and he was far from black. “The negro or Hamitic heel,” Reggie Fortune drowsily persisted. “I suspect the Hamitic or negro leg. And otherwise up above. And it’s all very distressing, Lomas.” “An Egyptian or perhaps an Arab: probably a Foreign Office pet,” Lomas consoled him. “That would get him into the Royal Enclosure.” Lomas was then removed by a duchess and Reggie Fortune tilted his hat still farther over his eyes and pondered whether it would be wise to drink before lunch and was dreamily aware of other people on his seat, an old man darkly tanned and soldierly in the custody of a little woman brilliantly dressed and terribly vivacious. She chattered without a pause, she made eyes, she made affectionate movements and little caresses. The old man though helpless seemed to be thinking of something else. And Reggie Fortune sketched lower and still lower estimates of human nature. They went away at last when everybody went away to gather in a crowd at the gates and along the railings for the coming of the King. You will please to observe that the time must have been about one o’clock.