coursing through my veins. Love! You are incapable of it. There is not
a drop of sentiment in your frozen carcass."

"Can I help that?" growled Tommy. It was an agony to him even to speak
about women.

"If you can't," said Pym, "all is over with you. An artist without
sentiment is a painter without colours. Young man, I fear you are
doomed."

And Tommy believed him, and quaked. He had the most gallant struggles
with himself. He even set his teeth and joined a dancing-class; though
neither Pym nor Elspeth knew of it, and it never showed afterwards in
his legs. In appearance he was now beginning to be the Sandys of the
photographs: a little over the middle height and rather heavily built;
nothing to make you uncomfortable until you saw his face. That solemn
countenance never responded when he laughed, and stood coldly by when
he was on fire; he might have winked for an eternity, and still the
onlooker must have thought himself mistaken. In his boyhood the mask
had descended scarce below his mouth, for there was a dimple in the
chin to put you at ease; but now the short brown beard had come, and
he was for ever hidden from the world.

He had the dandy's tastes for superb neckties, velvet jackets, and he
got the ties instead of dining; he panted for the jacket, knew all the
shop-windows it was in, but for years denied himself, with a moan, so
that he might buy pretty things for Elspeth. When eventually he got
it, Pym's friends ridiculed him. When he saw how ill his face matched
it he ridiculed himself. Often when Tommy was feeling that now at last
the ladies must come to heel, he saw his face suddenly in a mirror,