The boy's expression was pleasant, with an inkling of wistfulness, while
the soft glimmer of his lucid eyes betrayed the poet and the dreamer.
The smile of Reginald Clarke was the smile of a conqueror. A suspicion
of silver in his crown of dark hair only added dignity to his bearing,
while the infinitely ramified lines above the heavy-set mouth spoke at
once of subtlety and of strength. Without stretch of the imagination one
might have likened him to a Roman cardinal of the days of the Borgias,
who had miraculously stepped forth from the time-stained canvas and
slipped into twentieth century evening-clothes.

With the affability of complete self-possession he nodded in response to
greetings from all sides, inclining his head with special politeness to
a young woman whose sea-blue eyes were riveted upon his features with a
look of mingled hate and admiration.

The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued to stare at him
wild-eyed, as a damned soul in purgatory might look at Satan passing in
regal splendour through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.

Reginald Clarke walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,
still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of
certain rumours he had heard concerning Ethel Brandenbourg's mad love
for the man from whose features she could not even now turn her eyes.
Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.
There was a time in her career, some years ago in Paris, when it was
whispered that she had secretly married him and, not much later,
obtained a divorce. The matter was never cleared up, as both preserved
an uncompromising silence upon the subject of their matrimonial
experience. Certain it was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald