Everybody knew him and forgot him; even as he stood there in the
glare of golden sunset there was something about him indistinct,
like one of his own red-brown amateur photographs.
The third man had no hat; he was lean, in light, vaguely
sporting clothes, and the large pipe in his mouth made him look
all the leaner. He had a long ironical face, blue-black hair,
the blue eyes of an Irishman, and the blue chin of an actor.
An Irishman he was, an actor he was not, except in the old
days of Miss Hunt's charades, being, as a matter of fact,
an obscure and flippant journalist named Michael Moon. He had
once been hazily supposed to be reading for the Bar;
but (as Warner would say with his rather elephantine wit)
it was mostly at another kind of bar that his friends found him.
Moon, however, did not drink, nor even frequently get drunk;
he simply was a gentleman who liked low company.
This was partly because company is quieter than society:
and if he enjoyed talking to a barmaid (as apparently
he did), it was chiefly because the barmaid did the talking.
Moreover he would often bring other talent to assist her.
He shared that strange trick of all men of his type, intellectual and
without ambition--the trick of going about with his mental inferiors.
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