With the finish of dinner Esme walked out on to the stoep with the purpose of going for a stroll before bedtime. The long straight road beyond the gate looked inviting in the evening gloom. She would have welcomed a companion on her walk; but, save for her fellow-travellers, she knew no one; and her fellow-travellers showed no desire for further exercise. When she appeared on the stoep she was aware that the man who interested her so tremendously looked up as she passed close to him. He followed her with his eyes as she went down the steps, down the short path to the gate, through the gate, out on to the open road. But he did not move. Esme was conscious of his gaze though she could not see it; she was conscious of his interest. The certainty that she had caught his attention even as he had arrested hers pleased her. A restrained excitement gripped her. She laughed softly to herself as she stepped into the shadowed road. It was good to know that she left some one behind in whom she had provoked a faint curiosity in this place where she was a stranger and alone. He, too, was alone. She had thought when she passed him that he looked lonelier than any one she had ever seen or imagined, seated amid a crowd of people, saying nothing, doing nothing; sitting still and solitary, smoking and looking into the shadows. What was wrong with this man, she wondered, that he should remain so aloof from his fellows. He was not a newcomer, as she was; he had indeed, though she did not know this, been many months at the hotel; yet he seldom spoke to any one. The coming and going of visitors was viewed by him with indifference. They were nothing to him, these people; he was less than nothing to them. Occasionally some man came to the hotel with whom he entered into conversation; but more often people came and went and held no intercourse with him at all. They summed him up very quickly for the most part; looked askance at him, and left him severely alone. He did not care. It pleased him to remain undisturbed, and the general disapproval troubled him very little. But that night a girl's clear eyes, a girl's sweet serious face, got between him and his egotism, got between his vision and the shadowy dusk, and mutely asked a question of him: "What was he making of life?" What was he making of it? What was he giving in return for the gifts which he received? What was he doing, what had he ever done, to justify his existence? Nothing. The light wind carried the answer on the dusky wings of night. It beat into his consciousness and stirred him out of his easy acquiescence in things. He was flotsam on the sea of life--waste matter drifting aimlessly, to be finally ejected and flung, spent and useless, on the shore. Dust which returns to the dust, for which God in His inscrutable reason finds some use which eludes man's understanding.