It was a beautiful smile worthy
of a better cause. It was a smile which made one pause to wonder what
could have been the original disposition of the Disagreeable Man before
ill-health had cut him off from the affairs of active life. Was he happy
or unhappy? It was not known. He gave no sign of either the one state or
the other. He always looked very ill, but he did not seem to get worse.
He had never been known to make the faintest allusion to his own health.
He never "smoked" his thermometer in public; and this was the more
remarkable in an hotel where people would even leave off a conversation
and say: "Excuse me, Sir or Madam, I must now take my temperature. We
will resume the topic in a few minutes."
He never lent any papers or books, and he never borrowed any.
He had a room at the top of the hotel, and he lived his life, amongst
his chemistry bottles, his scientific books, his microscope, and his
camera. He never sat in any of the hotel drawing-rooms. There was
nothing striking nor eccentric about his appearance. He was neither
ugly nor good-looking, neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark.
He was thin and frail, and rather bent. But that might be the
description of any one in Petershof.
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