The red-haired man, to whom Deleglise had introduced me on the day of my first meeting with the Lady of the train, was another of his most constant visitors. It flattered my vanity that the red-haired man, whose name was famous throughout Europe and America, should condescend to confide to me--as he did and at some length--the deepest secrets of his bosom. Awed--at all events at first--I would sit and listen while by the hour he would talk to me in corners, telling me of the women he had loved. They formed a somewhat large collection. Julias, Marias, Janets, even Janes--he had madly worshipped, deliriously adored so many it grew bewildering. With a far-away look in his eyes, pain trembling through each note of his musical, soft voice, he would with bitter jest, with passionate outburst, recount how he had sobbed beneath the stars for love of Isabel, bitten his own flesh in frenzied yearning for Lenore. He appeared from his own account--if in connection with a theme so poetical I may be allowed a commonplace expression--to have had no luck with any of them. Of the remainder, an appreciable percentage had been mere passing visions, seen at a distance in the dawn, at twilight--generally speaking, when the light must have been uncertain. Never again, though he had wandered in the neighbourhood for months, had he succeeded in meeting them. It would occur to me that enquiries among the neighbours, applications to the local police, might possibly have been efficacious; but to have broken in upon his exalted mood with such suggestions would have demanded more nerve than at the time I possessed. In consequence, my thoughts I kept to myself. “My God, boy!” he would conclude, “may you never love as I loved that woman Miriam”--or Henrietta, or Irene, as the case might be. For my sympathetic attitude towards the red-haired man I received one evening commendation from old Deleglise. “Good boy,” said old Deleglise, laying his hand on my shoulder. We were standing in the passage. We had just shaken hands with the red-haired man, who, as usual, had been the last to leave. “None of the others will listen to him. He used to stop and confide it all to me after everybody else had gone. Sometimes I have dropped asleep, to wake an hour later and find him still talking. He gets it over early now. Good boy!”