The two men stood confronted, and at first sight of each other their quiescent dislike revived.

Each would have been willing to turn away from the other, but that was not possible.

Beaton snorted some sort of inarticulate salutation, which Dryfoos did not try to return; he asked if he could see him alone for a minute or two, and Beaton bade him come in, and swept some paint-blotched rags from the chair which he told him to take.

He noticed, as the old man sank tremulously into it, that his movement was like that of his own father, and also that he looked very much like Christine.

Dryfoos folded his hands tremulously on the top of his horn-handled stick, and he was rather finely haggard, with the dark hollows round his black eyes and the fall of the muscles on either side of his chin.