As to the Captain, I was struck on closer view by the perfect correctness of his personality.

Clothes, slight figure, clear-cut, thin, sun-tanned face, pose, all this was so good that it was saved from the danger of banality only by the mobile black eyes of a keenness that one doesn't meet every day in the south of France and still less in Italy.

Another thing was that, viewed as an officer in mufti, he did not look sufficiently professional.

That imperfection was interesting, too.
You may think that I am subtilizing my impressions on purpose, but you may take it from a man who has lived a rough, a very rough life, that it is the subtleties of personalities, and contacts, and events, that count for interest and memory--and pretty well nothing else.

This--you see--is the last evening of that part of my life in which I did not know that woman.