Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 1.pdf/255

Rh "He's certainly very pretty. But the ultimate test of a man is his strength," said George Harringay. "What do you think?"

"Oh!—I think so too," said the younger Miss Pirbright.

"It's the effeminate man who makes the masculine woman. When the glory of a man is his hair, what's a woman to do? And when men go running about with beautiful hectic dabs"

"Oh, George! You are so dreadfully satirical today," said the younger Miss Pirbright. "I'm sure it isn't paint."

"I'm really not his guardian, my dear Lady Hammergallow. Of course it's very kind indeed of you to take such an interest"

"Are you really going to improvise?" said Mrs. Jehoram in a state of cooing delight.

"SSsh!" said the Curate from Iping Hanger.

Then the Angel began to play, looking straight before him as he did so, thinking of the wonderful things of the Angelic Land, and yet insensibly letting the sadness he was beginning to feel steal over the fantasia he was playing. When he forgot his company the music was strange and sweet; when the sense of his surroundings floated into his mind the music grew capricious and grotesque. But so great was the hold of the Angelic music upon the Vicar that his anxieties fell from him at once, so soon as the Angel began to play. Mrs. Jehoram sat and looked rapt and sympathetic as hard as she could (though the music was puzzling at times) and tried to catch the Angel's eye. He really had a wonderfully mobile face, and the 223