The crash startled me from my self-control. The housekeeper bent
toward me and whispered:--

"Don't be excited. It's Mr. Rawjester,--he prefers to come in
sometimes in this way. It's his playfulness, ha! ha! ha!"

"I perceive," I said calmly. "It's the unfettered impulse of a
lofty soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of custom." And I turned
toward him.

He had never once looked at me. He stood with his back to the
fire, which set off the herculean breadth of his shoulders. His
face was dark and expressive; his under jaw squarely formed, and
remarkably heavy. I was struck with his remarkable likeness to a
Gorilla.

As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his nervous
fingers, I watched him with some interest. Suddenly he turned
toward me:--

"Do you think I'm handsome, young woman?"

"Not classically beautiful," I returned calmly; "but you have, if I
may so express myself, an abstract manliness,--a sincere and
wholesome barbarity which, involving as it does the naturalness--"
But I stopped, for he yawned at that moment,--an action which
singularly developed the immense breadth of his lower jaw,--and I
saw he had forgotten me. Presently he turned to the housekeeper:--

"Leave us."