Yet even here he thought broadly of the scene as a whole,
and asked himself no questions about words and phrases.
It seemed to be taken for granted in his mind that the scene
itself would be theatrically impressive, even spectacular.
In the event, this long-awaited culmination proved
to be disappointingly flat and commonplace. It was over
before Thorpe had said any considerable proportion of the
things he saw afterward that he had intended to say.
The two men came as he had expected they would--
and they bought their way out of the tragic "corner"
at precisely the price he had nominated in his mind.
But hardly anything else went as he had dimly prefigured it.
Mr. Rostocker was a yellow-haired man, and Mr. Aronson
was as dark as a Moor, and no physical resemblance of
features or form suggested itself to the comparing eye,
yet Thorpe even now, when they stood brusquely silent
before him, with their carefully-brushed hats pulled
down over their eyes, stuck to it in his own mind
that it was hard to tell them apart. To the end,
there was something impersonal in his feeling toward them.
They, for their part, coldly abstained from exhibiting
a sign of feeling about him, good, bad, or indifferent.
It was the man with the fair hair and little curly flaxen
beard who spoke: "How do you do! I understand that we can
buy eight thousand five hundred Rubber Consols from you
at 'twenty-three.
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