strong teeth.

Large rings glistened on his large fingers. He presented a type exactly
opposite to that of Boleslas Gorka. If the grandson of the Polish
Castellan recalled the dangerous finesse of a feline, of a slender and
beautiful panther, Maitland could be compared to one of those mastiffs in
the legends, with a jaw and muscles strong enough to strangle lions. The
painter in him was only in the eye and in the hand, in consequence of a
gift as physical as the voice to a tenor. But that instinct, almost
abnormal, had been developed, cultivated to excess, by the energy of will
in refinement, a trait so marked in the Anglo-Saxons of the New World
when they like Europe, instead of detesting it. For the time being, the
longing for refinement seemed reduced to the passionate inhalations of
that divine, fair rose of love which was Madame Steno, a rose almost too
full-blown, and which the autumn of forty years had begun to fade. But
she was still charming. And how little Maitland heeded the fact that his
wife was in the room near by, the windows of which cast forth a light
which caused to stand out more prominently the shadow of the voluptuous
terrace! He held his mistress's hand within his own, but abandoned it
when he perceived Dorsenne, who took particular pains to move a chair
noisily on approaching the couple, and to say, in a loud voice, with a
merry laugh:

"I should have made a poor gallant abbe of the last century, for at night
I can really see nothing. If your cigarette had not served me as a
beacon-light I should have run against the balustrade."

"Ah, it is you, Dorsenne," replied Madame Steno, with a sharpness
contrary to her habitual amiability, which proved to the novelist that
first of all he was the "inconvenient third" of the classical comedies,