The two men were friends of mine, and I wanted them to like each other; and, perhaps because they were both fond of me, I thought that they would get on well together, and that we should form a happy and a lively trio at dinner. Was this the fancy of an egoist? I have sometimes wondered since. At the time I speak of I had known Deeming for over two years, having met him first in London at a friend’s house. Vernon was a comparatively recent acquaintance whom I had encountered when I was travelling in Algeria; but already in my heart I gave him the dearer title, for I had come to like him greatly, and I knew that my sympathy was returned. The two men were very different—in their appearance, their natures, their ways of life—but differences sometimes seem to make for pleasant intercourse, and even for intimacy. We often love ourselves; but do we generally love those who markedly resemble us? Vernon usually spent his winters in Rome, where he had a delightful house on the Trinità dei Monti. Deeming had come from England to take a long holiday, as his health had partially broken down from overwork. He was a very successful London doctor, devoted to his profession. Vernon was a rich man, passionately interested in the arts and in travel. How well I remember that first evening we spent together, that—I had almost written fatal evening! We were dining in the restaurant, and directly I had made my friends known to each other we went in and sat down at our table, which was in the middle of the room. Deeming was a very thin man, nearly forty, clean shaven, with iron-grey thick hair, narrow clear-cut features, and a tremendously decisive mouth and chin, betokening power and resolution. His face was pale, and bore traces of his recent illness. In his long, rather colourless grey eyes, penetrating and usually calm, one could see the slightly anxious and irritable expression of a man whose nerves had been, and still were, overwrought. His hands were delicate, with thin fingers curving backward perceptibly at the tips. He leaned forward as he sat in his chair, glancing over the crowd of English, Americans, and foreigners who were busily eating and talking round us. Vernon was tall and fair, younger than Deeming by some five or six years, with meditative, almost gentle, and very kind brown eyes, a sensitive, though not handsome, face, with a clear boyish colour in it, a voice that was generally low unless he got much interested in the subject he was discussing, and an extremely fascinating manner, whose fascination sprang from his great courtesy, combined with a perfectly natural self-possession, as of a man who seldom thought about himself, and who was desirous of making things go easily and pleasantly for those with whom he was brought into contact.