Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/229

 rubbed shoulders with all sorts of men and women, but in spite of an honest catholicity of outlook, she had come to the conclusion already that there was only one kind for which she had any real use. It was not a question of loaves and fishes, or a puerile snobbishness; it was simply that one of the deepest instincts she had, the sense of the artist, demanded a setting.

Walking along, blind to everything but the misery of this reaction, she was suddenly brought up short, thrown as it were against the world in its concrete reality, by the knowledge that a pair of eyes was devouring her. Cutting across her path at an acute angle as he converged upon her from the direction of Kensington Gardens was a man wholly absorbed in the occupation of looking at her. With a start she awoke to the force of his gaze; her subconscious perception of it was so strong that it even aroused a tacit hostility.

Who was this large, lean, top-hatted creature striding towards her in a pair of aggressively checked trousers? Where had she seen that freckled face, those bold eyes, those prognathous jaws? As he came on he caught her gaze and fixed it; but she dropped her eyes at once, adroitly giving him only the line of her cheek to look at. Whoever he was, he was not a gentleman!

In the next moment, however, she had begun to realize that he was outside and beyond any trite symbol of that kind. He was less a man than a natural force; moreover, as soon as he had passed her, he stopped abruptly and turned round to follow her with his eyes. She did not need to turn round herself to verify her sense of the act, even had personal dignity not intervened to prevent her.