“There you have it all. He went, he did the incredible thing, and then, quite properly, he died. The rest--the rest is mere drama.” He sat back. I put the packet down. “Do you mean that these are his documents, and that you believe in them? Have you read them?” “Have I read them? Do I look as if I would read an anthropologist’s note-books? Of course, I can see the humor of throwing over Christianity, lock, stock, and barrel, only to spend your life studying totemism--and on top of that, calling it a ‘career.’ If you think the absurdity of it is lost on me, you’re quite mistaken. But I would be willing to take my oath before the Last Tribunal that there isn’t a false word in that whole pile. Paramore did it--the more honor to him. When it comes to expecting any one else to believe it--I’m not such a fool. But I should think my word might suffice for you.” I shrugged my shoulders. Hoyting lighted another cigarette, folded his arms on the table, and looked at me. “I knew everything there was to know about Paramore before he died,” he affirmed. “I didn’t in the least want to know any of it, but it was inevitable. He had no control over his mental muscles--complete paralysis of the reticent nerve, you might say. I know, I tell you. If you don’t choose to believe it--you’ll have doubted my word, that’s all. I have all the evidence there is; and why should I lie about it?” “Oh, I believe it--but it’s extraordinary.” “Should I be here if it weren’t extraordinary? It’s preposterous. But there it is.” “And the rest, you said, was drama?” Hoyting looked out. “Let’s go to a café,” he said; “I want a rest.” I assented. There is something in the transitoriness of a café crowd that quiets Hoyting. No one can be expected to stay overnight in a café. He likes the restlessness, the ridiculous suggestion that every one else may be as foot-loose as he. Besides, Hoyting is always restive under the strain of a story; he chafes at the bounds and limits of any rounded episode. He needs to draw breath and come back to it, as it were, from very far. So we ordered things; sitting on the very edge of the boulevard, we sipped and watched for an hour. In the end I saw signs of his return to the matter in hand. “Beauty--” he began suddenly, pushing his glass aside, “it’s something I never see. But now and then a man or a woman delights me curiously. Madame Pothier was like that. She showed you what civilization of the older sort can do when it likes. And Paramore saw it, too. He was clean gone on her. He would have told her everything if he had had any right to. I said it wasn’t a silly tale of woman’s ennobling influence, didn’t I? No more it was. Yet he saw her as soon as he reached Africa, and I am sure he carried her image into the interior with him--as he once did Joan Whitaker’s, only with an immense difference, after all. This time he brought back truth instead of lies. So at least it couldn’t have been a bad image to live with.