be as interesting as they look, or is it the background? The fact that we sleep in the cells of dead monks, and have tea in their abbot's corridor, may lend an exotic tint to people who would appear commonplace enough elsewhere; but they do seem coloured by romance here. Who in the world are they all, Eugene?"
"Who are they all?" the American repeated, and shook his head. "I drop in here for tea sometimes; but I usually don't know many of the hotel's guests and so I can't tell you definitely much about them—which may be the better for you, my friend."
"The better for me?" the Englishman repeated, a little perplexed. "How 'better'?"
"Because where you have no restraining information you can indulge your fancy. Yonder, for instance—that fat, black-bearded man by the pergola. Why does he wear thick white gloves in the warm sunshine? Since I can't tell you anything about him, you are at liberty to imagine any past for him you like. Obviously, that black-bearded man is a sleeked-up scoundrel who made himself wickedly rich out of Arab slave raids with Tippoo Tib thirty years ago, and it is the simplest thing in the world to see that he keeps his gloves on to conceal a telltale scar."
