reddened by the wind. And the husband looked back
at her, calm, practical, protecting. They were very much alike. So
doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for
her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would look,
standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom.
Calm, proprietary, kind! He passed them and walked behind a second less
distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact
and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this
dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same
sensation. It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a
circle--couple after couple all the same. No heads, toes, angles of
their souls stuck out anywhere. In the sea of their environments they
were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving
at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were
all respectable. And he himself as respectable as any.

He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and
poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:

... Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the matter
with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean as
caterpillars. To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole
out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us,
is what we're all after. There's something about human nature that is
awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they
seem to me to be....

He paused, biting his pen. Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel
him to see a doctor for writing in that style? How would the world go
round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability,
and the lack of sympathy?

He looked out of the open window. Down in the street a footman was
settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the
decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to
him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.

He got up and walked up and down. His rooms, in a narrow square skirting
Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a
man of means. Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in
a very miscellaneous way. They were not bare, but close inspection
revealed that ever