Conservative, for these big men were often unprogressive. She examined
him carefully out of the corner of her eye to estimate the chances of
his being brought into the fold of reform by properly selected oratory.
That at least was the character of contemplation she intended, but
though she was so young that she believed the enjoyment of any sensory
impression sheer waste unless it was popped into the mental stockpot and
made the basis of some sustaining moral soup, she found herself just
looking at him. His black hair lay in streaks and rings on his rain-wet
forehead and gave him an abandoned and magical air, like the ghost of a
drowned man risen for revelry; his dark gold skin told a traveller's
tale of far-off pleasurable weather; and the bare hand that lay on his
knee was patterned like a snake's belly with brown marks, doubtless the
stains of his occupation; and his face was marked with an expression
that it vexed her she could not put a name to, for if at her age she
could not read human nature like a book she never would. It was not
hunger, for it was serene, and it was not greed, for it was austere, and
yet it certainly signified that he habitually made upon life some urgent
demand that was not wholly intellectual and that had not been wholly
satisfied. As she wondered a slight retraction of his chin and a
drooping of his heavy eyelids warned her, by their likeness to the
controlled but embarrassed movements of a highly-bred animal approached
by a stranger, that he knew she was watching him, and she took her gaze
away. But she had to look again, just to confirm her feeling that
however fanciful she might be about him his appearance would always give
some further food for her imagination; and presently, for though she was
the least vain person in the world she was the most egotistical, began
to compare the large correctness of his features with the less academic
spontaneity of her own. "Lord! Why has everybody but me got a straight
nose!" she exclaimed to herself. "But it's all blethers to think that an
indented chin means character. How can a dunt in your bone have anything