When Rolfe was five and twenty, Hugh being two years younger, they met after a long separation, and found each other intolerable; a decade later their meeting led to hearty friendship.
Rolfe had become independent, and was tasting his freedom in a twelvemonth's travel.

The men came face to face one day on the deck of a steamer at Port Said.

Physically, Rolfe had changed so much that the other had a difficulty in recognising him; morally, the change was not less marked, as Carnaby very soon became aware.

At thirty-seven this process of development was by no means arrested, but its slow and subtle working escaped observation unless it were that of Harvey Rolfe himself.
His guest this evening, in a quiet corner of the dining-room where he generally sat, was a man, ten years his junior, named Morphew: slim, narrow-shouldered, with sandy hair, and pale, delicate features of more sensibility than intelligence; restless, vivacious, talking incessantly in a low, rapid voice, with frequent nervous laughs which threw back his drooping head.

A difference of costume--Rolfe wore morning dress, Morphew the suit of ceremony--accentuated the younger man's advantage in natural and acquired graces; otherwise, they presented the contrast of character and insignificance.