And he smiled, looking up to the ceiling with hands spread out
and fingers lightly playing one upon the other.
At a restaurant in Great Portland Street, shut off from the rest of
the room by the astute arrangement of a screen--ranged around every
table, presumably to ward off the draught--they dined in comparative
seclusion. Into the selection of that dinner Devenish put a great
part of his ingenuity. The man who knows how to choose a meal and
savour those intervals between the courses with anecdote, has
reached a high-water mark of social excellence. Devenish was the type.
He was not hampered with the possession of intelligence. Wit he had,
but it was not his own. The man, after all, who can echo the wit of
others and suit its application to the moment is a man of no little
accomplishment. The least that can be said of him is that he is worthy
of his place at a dinner-table where conversation is as empty as the
bubbles that shoot through the glittering wine to the frothy surface.
To suffer from intelligence in such an atmosphere as this is a
disease--the silent sickness--of which such symptoms as the lips
tight bound, the heart heavy, and an aching void behind the eyes,
are common to all its victims.
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