And yet, the sound of that name had brought him—as clearly as I had seen him that night in Paris—before me. I heard his voice, felt the vigor of his personality, saw him throw back his head and laugh. And here, in the chair next my own, and ready to talk, sat a man who, by every rule of probability and chance, would be able to tell me about him. “I know a townsman of yours,” I said, and he evinced at once a kind of mild and flattered surprise. “From Dubuque?” he said. “Well, well! What’s his name?” “Corey,” I said. “Doctor Corey.” It had upon him a most unexpected effect; very much, it seemed, the same effect his announcement had had upon me the moment before. He leaned forward no more than an inch, but his mild gray eyes kindled with a kind of excited intensity. “You knew Jim Corey! Not here—not in Dubuque?” “I met him in Paris,” I said, “quite a long while ago.” “In _Paris_! Well, well—think of that!” He shook his head, and regarded me suddenly with a stronger and new kind of interest. I was, apparently, the first person he had ever encountered who had really known Corey abroad, and I could see that the fact had established me immediately in his mind as an intimate friend of Corey’s. I suppose I should have told him that I had only seen Corey once; that I couldn’t, as a matter of fact, claim more than a passing acquaintance. But if I had, I should never have heard what I heard. And, anyway, it wouldn’t have been, in the sense in which such things count, exactly true—for it had never been, for me at least, a one night’s acquaintance. I had seemed to know Corey better in that one night than one knows most men in a month of companionship. Yes, it was something more than the curiosity of a passing acquaintance that caused me to let the old fellow keep his impression. “It’s queer,” he said, suddenly, throwing up his head, and pressing open the pages of his popular magazine as if he were about to begin to read, “he was a kind of relative of mine. His father and I—third cousins on our mothers’ side.” He broke off and regarded me again silently, and I believe now that he was trying to persuade himself not to go on, not to say anything more. But the temptation, the maximum, I might say, of temptation, combined with the minimum of danger that he should ever see me again, overcame his natural shyness and discretion. He seemed to decide, upon my ejaculation, to go on. “His house is just ’round the corner from mine. His wife lives there now.” “His wife!” The surprise was plain enough in my voice. And this seemed, just for a second, to surprise him, too. “You knew,” he said, “that he had married?” I explained that I hadn’t seen Corey for several years, and added that I had, however, understood that he was thinking of settling down. It put, I could see, a different face upon what he had to tell, for he seemed to adjust himself, as if he must now go back to something he had thought already understood between us.