Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/88

76 "Oh, you can't 'see' it!" I exclaimed.

"How, then, do you get at it?"

"You don't! You mustn't suppose he's good-looking," I added.

"Why, his wife says he's lovely!"

My hilarity may have struck my interlocutress as excessive, but I confess it broke out afresh. Had she acted only in obedience to this singular plea, so characteristic, on Mrs. Saltram's part, of what was irritating in the narrowness of that lady's point of view? "Mrs. Saltram," I explained, "undervalues him where he is strongest, so that, to make up for it, perhaps, she overpraises him where he's weak. He's not, assuredly, superficially attractive; he's middle-aged, fat, featureless, save for his great eyes."

"Yes, his great eyes," said my young lady attentively. She had evidently heard all about his great eyes—the beaux yeux for which alone we had really done it all.

"They're tragic and splendid—lights on a dangerous coast. But he moves badly and dresses worse, and altogether he's any thing but smart."

My companion appeared to reflect on this, and after a moment she enquired: "Do you call him a real gentleman?"

I started slightly at the question, for I had a sense of recognizing it; George Gravener, years before, that first flushed night, had put me face to face with it. It had embarrassed me then, but it didn't embarrass me now, for I had lived with it