He was drying Noll’s face, and removing the shaving-cloths from about his chin when the cling of the door-bell gave warning that someone had entered the outer shop--footsteps came towards the room. “Whisht!” said the barber, “here’s Mr. Cartel Maungy.” “Who?” “Whisht! I’ll tell ye when he’s gone, Mr. Noll. Sure, the paper’s lyin’ about there somewheres--and I’ll have done with the gintleman in three minutes forty-five seconds.” Noll nodded, and betook himself to a seat, suspecting some mystery that the barber would divulge after his own quaint fashion, which brooked no hurrying--to end in some fantastic nothingness or a good story. The door opened, and there entered, sedate and old-aired, a handsome dandified little old gentleman. The barber, with gorgeous bow and diffident formality, relieved the silent man of his hat and cane, and leading him to a seat, soon had him swathed to the chin in cloths, and was shaving the soap-lathered ascetic face that gazed at the ceiling meditatively. The shaving being done, and the swathings of many white cloths removed from about his chin and shoulders, the courtly figure arose from the chair, and being given his hat and cane by the even more elaborate barber, he withdrew from the room. “Who’s that?” asked Noll. “Well, sir; he’s a kind of Frenchified poet av the name of Cartel de Maungy.... The gintlemen call him The Man of Pallid Ideals,” said the barber. “The gintlemen were saying only last night that he’s been a bit of a literary genius in his time in the minor poet line; but Misther Myre he says the man’s but an Inkstain on the Carpet of Time. Oh, but it’s a trenchant tongue Misther Myre’s got on him when he gets handlin’ the comparisons against literary reputations----” “Yes, yes, Devlin--never mind Mr. Myre. About this man of pallid ideals----” The barber lowered his voice to the confidential: “Ah, now that’s a mighty queer story, Mr. Noll. It’s the victim of the grand passion that man is; Vanus rest his soul. Victim? begod!--he’s the hero of a romance that’s kept a holt of him since his chin began the need of shavin’--and that’s as long as your grandfather or mine can remimber the seasons. That man has just played on the music of his little love-affair until he’s clean pulled the cat-gut out of the old fiddle--plucked at the shtrings of the old melody until he’s torn the bowels out of the old harpsichord of Romance.... Sure, my father shaved him before me, and remembered the day it got about that the girl’s father swore he’d have no damned Frenchified poetaster for son-in-law. And the little gintleman’s been lovin’ the girl ever since, until there’s only the memory of them both left to each other. He might have married the little lady this forty years--the divil a soul to prevent it--but----” He shrugged his shoulders, and gave up the tangle. “Well?” asked Noll.