had hinted.

As she talked to Paul Lane, whom she had known pretty well for years,
and liked as much as she could ever like him, she was secretly intent on
the new note. Her quick mind of an intelligent girl, who had seen many
people and been much in contact with the London world, was pacing about
him, measuring, weighing, summing up with the audacity of youth. Whether
he pleased her eyes she was not sure. But through her eyes he interested
her.

Heath was tall, and looked taller than he was because he was almost
emaciated, and he was a plain man whom something made beautiful, not
handsome. This was a strange, and almost mysterious imaginativeness
which was expressed by his face, and even, perhaps, by something in his
whole bearing and manner. It looked out certainly at many moments from
his eyes. But not only his eyes shadowed it forth. The brow, the rather
thin lips, the hands, and occasionally their movements, suggested it.
His face was not what is often called "an open face." Although quite
free from slyness, or anything unpleasantly furtive, it had a shut,
reserved look when his eyes were cast down. There was something austere,
combined with something eager and passionate, in his expression and
manner. Charmian guessed him to be twenty-six or twenty-seven.

He was now turned sideways to Charmian, and was moving rather restlessly
on the sofa beside Mrs. Mansfield, but was listening with obvious
intentness to what she was saying. Charmian found herself wondering how
she knew that he had taken a swift liking to her mother.

"Did you have an interesting time at dinner?" she asked Paul Lane.

"Not specially so. Music was never mentioned."

"Was boxing?"

"Boxing!"

"Well, Mr. Elliot said he and Mr. Heath met first at a place in
Whitechapel where Conky somebody was fighting the Nutcracker."

Lane smiled with his mouth.

"I suspect the new note to be a poseur, not quite of the usual species,
but a poseur. Most musicians are ludicrously of their profession. This
one is too much apparently detached from it to be quite natural. But the
truth is, nobody is really natural. And no doubt it's a great mercy that
it is so."

Charmian looked at him for a few seconds in silence. Then she observed:

"You know there's something in you that I can't abide, as old dames
say."

This time Lane really smiled.

"I hope so," he said. "Or else I should certainly lack variety. Well,
Max, what is it?"

"Mrs. Shiffney wants yo