The interim had been packed with incongruity.

There had been a dinner with Kempner, solemn, full of patriotism and philosophy; a drunken dinner at Teppich's; another, and a worse, at Nesbit's; and the banquet of a native merchant, which began at four o'clock on melon-seeds, tea, black yearling eggs, and a hot towel, and ended at three in the morning on rice-brandy and betel served by unreal women with chalked faces and vermilion-spotted lips, simpering and melancholy.

By day, there was work, or now and then a lesson with Dr.Earle's teacher, a little aged Chinaman of intricate, refined, and plaintive courtesy.

Under his guidance Rudolph learned rapidly, taking to study as a prodigal might take to drink.

And with increasing knowledge came increasing tranquillity; as when he found that the hideous cry, startling him at every dawn, was the signal not for massacre, but buffalo-milk.
Then, too, came the mild excitement of moving into his own house, the Portuguese nunnery.