As he finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, a
movement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energy
that found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. People
sometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, who was, in fact, his
distant cousin, but the likeness consisted solely in a certain evident
possession of virile power--a quality which women are accustomed to
describe as masculine. He was not tall, and yet he gave an impression of
bigness; away from him one invariably thought of him as of unusual
proportions, but, standing by his side, he was found to be hardly above
the ordinary height. The development of his closely knit figure, the
splendid breadth of his chest and shoulders, the slight projection of
his heavy brows and the almost brutal strength of his jaw and chin, all
combined to emphasise that appearance of ardent vitality which has
appealed so strongly to the imagination of women. Seen in repose there
was a faint suggestion of cruelty in the lines of his mouth under his
short brown moustache, but this instead of detracting from the charm he
exercised only threw into greater relief the genial brightness of his
smile.

Now Gerty, glancing up at him, remembered a little curiously, the
whispered reason for his long absence. There was always a woman in the
wind when it blew rumours of Kemper, though he was generally considered
to regard the sex with the blithe indifference of a man to whom feminine
favour has come easily. How easily Gerty had sometimes wondered, though
she had hardly ventured so much as a dim surmise. Ten years, she would
have said, was a considerable period from which to date a passion, and
she remembered now that ten years ago Kemper had secured a divorce from
his wife in some Western court. There had been no particular scandal, no
damning charges on either side; and a club wit had remarked at the time
that the only possible ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs.