What confession had been on Nur-el-Din's lips when she
had broken off that afternoon with the cry:
"Already I have said too much!"
Thereafter Desmond's eyes were never long absent from Mortimer's
face, scrutinizing each feature in turn, the eyes, set rather
close together, grotesquely shielded by the thick spectacles, the
narrow cheeks, the rather cynical mouth half hidden by the heavy,
drooping moustache, the broad forehead broken by a long lock of
dark hair brushed out flat in a downward direction from an
untidy, unkempt crop.
They talked no more of Strangwise or of Nur-el-Din. The rest of
dinner was passed in conversation of a general order in which Mr.
Mortimer showed himself to great advantage. He appeared to be a
widely traveled, well-read man, with a fund of dry, often rather
grim humor. And all the time Desmond watched, watched,
unobtrusively but unceasingly, looking out for something he was
confident of detecting through the suave, immobile mask of this
brilliant conversationalist.
Skillfully, almost imperceptibly, Desmond edged the talk on to
the war. In this domain, too, Mortimer showed himself a man of
broad views, of big, comprehensive ideas. Towards the strategy
and tactics of the two sides, he adopted the attitude of an
impartial onlooker, but in his comments he proved himself to have
a thorough grasp of the military situation.
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