sly.) I can only stay about two minutes.

Morell comes back with Eugene, whom Burgess contemplates moist-eyed
with enthusiasm. He is a strange, shy youth of eighteen, slight,
effeminate, with a delicate childish voice, and a hunted, tormented
expression and shrinking manner that show the painful sensitiveness
that very swift and acute apprehensiveness produces in youth, before
the character has grown to its full strength. Yet everything that his
timidity and frailty suggests is contradicted by his face. He is
miserably irresolute, does not know where to stand or what to do with
his hands and feet, is afraid of Burgess, and would run away into
solitude if he dared; but the very intensity with which he feels a
perfectly commonplace position shows great nervous force, and his
nostrils and mouth show a fiercely petulant wilfulness, as to the
quality of which his great imaginative eyes and fine brow are
reassuring. He is so entirely uncommon as to be almost unearthly; and
to prosaic people there is something noxious in this unearthliness,
just as to poetic people there is something angelic in it. His dress is
anarchic. He wears an old blue serge jacket, unbuttoned over a woollen
lawn tennis shirt, with a silk handkerchief for a cravat, trousers
matching the jacket, and brown canvas shoes. In these garments he has
apparently lain in the heather and waded through the waters; but there
is no evidence of his having ever brushed them.

As he catches sight of a stranger on entering, he stops, and edges
along the wall on the opposite side of the room.

MORELL (as he enters). Come along: you can spare us quarter of an hour,
at all events. This is my father-in-law, Mr. Burgess--Mr. Marchbanks.

MARCHBANKS (nervously backing against the bookcase). Glad to meet you,
sir.

BURGESS (crossing to him with great heartiness, whilst Morell joins
Candida at the fire). Glad to meet YOU, I'm shore, Mr. Morchbanks.
(Forcing him to shake hands.) 'Ow do you find yoreself this weather?
'Ope you ain't lettin' James put no foolish ideas into your 'ed?

MARCHBANKS. Foolish ideas! Oh, you mean Socialism. No.

BURGESS. That's right. (Again looking at his watch.) Well, I must go
now: there's no 'elp for it. Yo're not comin' my way, are you, Mr.
Morchbanks?

MARCHBANKS. Which way is that?

BURGESS. Victawriar Pork station. There's a city train at 12.25.

MORELL. Nonsense. Eugene will stay to lunch with us, I expect.

MARCHBANKS (anxiously excu