"
Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
imperturbable smile.
Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
manufactured their own thoughts.
Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.
"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
side. If I did not, he would go past."
This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
England on his return from America.
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