straight, thin nose, and winged, open nostrils, so
perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely
followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache,
lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and
rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The
tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly
supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in
relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately matched to
the pale, brown hair and beard.--So much for the detail of the young
man's appearance. As a whole, that appearance was elegant as only
French youth ventures to be elegant. Refinement enveloped Paul
Destournelle--refinement, over-sensitised and under-vitalised, as that
of a rare exotic forced into precocious blossoming by application of
some artificial horticultural process. And all this--elaborately
effective and seductive as long as one should happen to think so,
elaborately nauseous when one had ceased so to think--had long been
familiar to Helen to the point of satiety. She turned wicked, satiety
transmuting itself into active vindictiveness. How gladly would she
have torn this emasculated creature limb from limb, and flung the lot
of it among the refuse of the Neapolitan gutter!

But, from beneath the shade of his umbrella, the young man recommenced
his plaint.

"It is inconceivable that, knowing my cruel capacity for suffering, you
should be indifferent to my present situation," he asserted, half
violently, half fretfully. "The whole range of history would fail to
offer a case of parallel callousness. You, whose personality has
penetrated the recesses of my being! You, who are acquainted with the
infinite intricacy of my mental and emotional organisation! A touch
will endanger the harmony of that exquisite mechanism. The
interpenetration of the component parts of my being is too complete. I
exist, I receive sensations, I suffer, I rejoice, as a whole. And this
lays me open to universal, to incalculable, pain. Now my nerves are
shattered--intellectual, moral, physical anguish permeate in every
part. I rally my self-reverence, my nobility of soul. I make efforts.
By day I visit spots of natural beauty and objects of art. But these
refuse to gratify me. My thought is too turgid to receive the impress
of them. Concentration is impossible to me. Feverish agitation perverts
my imagination. My idea