Putting down with a shaking hand a long glass emptied of its contents--paid for by Heyst--he said, with that deliberate sagacity which no mere water-drinker ever attained: "Heyst's a puffect g'n'lman.

Puffect! But he's a ut-uto-utopist." Heyst had just gone out of the place of public refreshment where this pronouncement was voiced.

Utopist, eh?
Upon my word, the only thing I heard him say which might have had a bearing on the point was his invitation to old McNab himself.

Turning with that finished courtesy of attitude, movement voice, which was his obvious characteristic, he had said with delicate playfulness: "Come along and quench your thirst with us, Mr.McNab!" Perhaps that was it.

A man who could propose, even playfully, to quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal.