hair
was cut in masculine fashion, her attire unattractive. As clearly as he
could distinguish her features he saw that she was not good-looking. A
stern mask it was, though not hardened. He would not have looked at such
an ordinary physiognomy twice if the iris had not signalled his peculiar
sense. There was no doubt that to her it was due. Susceptible as he was
to odours, Baldur was not a ladies' man. He went into society because it
was his world; and he attended in a perfunctory manner to the enormous
estate left him by his father, bound up in a single trust company. But
his thoughts were always three thousand miles away, in that delectable
city of cities, Paris. For Paris he suffered a painful nostalgia. There
he met his true brethren, while in New York he felt an alien. He was
one. The city, with its high, narrow streets--granite tunnels; its rude
reverberations; its colourless, toiling barbarians, with their
undistinguished physiognomies, their uncouth indifference to art,--he
did not deny that he loathed this nation, vibrating only in the presence
of money, sports, grimy ward politics, while exhibiting a depressing
snobbery to things British. There was no _nuance_ in its life or its
literature, he asserted. France was his _patrie psychique_; he would
return there some day and forever....

The iris crept under his nostrils, and again he regarded the woman. This
time she faced him, and he no longer wondered, for he saw her eyes.
With such eyes only a great soul could be imprisoned in her brain. They
were smoke-gray, with long, dark lashes, and they did not seem to focus
perfectly--at least there was enough deflection to make their expression
odd, withal interesting, like the slow droop of Eleonora Duse's magic
eye. Though her features were rigid, the woman's glance spoke to Baldur,
spoke eloquently. Her eyes were--or was it the iris?--symbols of a
soul-state, of a rare emotion, not of sex, nor yet sexless. The pupils
seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than
before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither
coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense
expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his
shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He
no longer paid any attention to his surroundings. The sermon was like
the sound of far-away falling waters, the worshippers were so many black
marks. Of two things