At dinner he was allotted a seat at a large round table reserved for unattached males like himself. The company was a curiously mixed one, but pleasant withal. A Norwegian from San Francisco, who sold Japanese curios, a globe-trotting Briton, a Southerner from Alabama, a man from Plainville, New Jersey, and a Mexican who spoke no English, made up, with Power himself, a genuinely cosmopolitan board, and Power soon discovered that he was the only person present who could understand the Mexican. Mere politeness insisted that he should lend his aid as interpreter when a negro waiter asked the olive-skinned señor what he would like to eat; but the "Greaser," as he was dubbed instantly, proved to be a jovial soul, who laughed when any of the other men laughed, insisted on having the joke translated, and roared again when it was explained to him, so that each quip earned a double recognition, while he never failed to pay his own score by some joyous anecdote or amusing repartee. Thus, Power was forced into the role of "good fellow" in a way which he would not have believed possible a few hours earlier. In spite of himself, the merry mood of other years came uppermost, and, when the party broke up at midnight, after a long and lively sitting on a moonlit veranda, he retired to his room with a certain feeling of marvel and agreeable surprise at the change which one evening of enforced relaxation had effected in his outlook on life. He decided that these chance companions had done him a world of good, that his misanthropic attitude was a false one, and that a week or two at Newport might send him back to Colorado a better man. Applying to a state of mind a metaphor drawn from material things, he felt as an Englishman feels who leaves his own dripping and fog-bound island on a January afternoon and wakes next morning amid the roses and sunshine of the Riviera. The glitter on land and sea may bear a close resemblance to spangles and gilt paper on the stage; but it is cheering to eyes which have not seen the sun for weeks, and when, in such conditions, John Bull sits down to luncheon under the awnings of a café facing the blue Mediterranean, he is unquestionably quite a different being from the muffled-up person who hurried on board the steamer at Dover. Power had contrived to withdraw himself so completely from the more genial side of existence at Bison that he rediscovered it with a fresh zest. Next day he was no longer alone. The man from Birmingham, Alabama, and the Englishman shared his love of horses, and the three visited the judge, who stabled some of his cattle on the island, and had photographs and pedigrees galore wherewith to describe the stock on his New York farm.