ad chalked it
with dissipation. His physical body was whitened--chalked--a whited
sepulchre; his moral nature likewise chalked.

At the back of his thought lay not the high esteem of the poet-thinker
for beauty, but the cynical blackguardism of the XIXth century.

The cynicism that deliberately reckons up things a Shakespeare would
admire at their lowest possible sale value. A slow whiff of smoke from a
corner of the sneering mouth, an air of intense knowingness, as much as
to say, "You may depend upon me--I've been behind the scenes. All this
is got up, you know; stage effect in front, pasteboard at the rear;
nothing in it."

In the sensuality of Nero there may still be found some trace of a
higher nature; "What an artist the world has lost!" he exclaimed, dying.

The empress Theodora craved for the applause of the theatre to which she
exposed her beauty.

This low, cynical nineteenth century blackguardism thinks of nothing but
lowness, and has no ideal. The milliner even has an ideal, she looks to
colour, shape, effect; though but in dress, yet it is an ideal. There
was no ideal in Ned Marks.

They called him from within to take his turn with the cue; he did not
answer, he was so absorbed in his calculations. He was clever--in a way;
he had quite sufficient penetration to see that this was no common girl.
She was not beautiful--yet, she was not even pretty, and so plainly
dressed; still there was something marked in her features. And she was
with old Iden.

Amaryllis did not understand the meaning of his glance, but she felt
that it was an insult. She looked down quickly, seized her grandfather's
arm, and drew him out from the pavement into the street, yielding a
little to the current and so hoping to presently pass it.

By this time, as Ned Marks did not answer, his companions had come to
the window to discover what he was staring at. "Oho!" they laughed.
"It's Miss Iden. Twenty thousand guineas in the iron box!"

Iden's great white hat, which always seemed to sit loosely on his head,
was knocked aside by the elbow of a burly butcher struggling in the
throng; Amaryllis replaced it upright, and leading him this way, and
pushing him that, got at last to the opposite pavement, and so behind
the row of booths, between them and the houses where there was less
crush. Taking care of him, she forgot to look to her feet and stepped in
the gutter where there was a puddle. The cold water came through the
crack in her