‘There would be no beauty, Sir, if there were. Eternal conformation to a rigid model would make very deformity desirable by contrast.’
‘Very true’—he showed an inclination to chuckle—‘I think some of us feel that. It is human to like change—even to pursue it on occasion to extremes. The loveliest of her sex will sometimes attach herself to the most repulsive of ours—and vice versa, it may hap. Hast ever been in love with a monstrosity yourself, Master Clerivault?’
‘Nay, not so far, Sir, not so far.’ He lifted his chin, handling his throat as if he traced its contours luxuriously. ‘Yet I may have felt—I do not say—the lure—what I may call the fascination of abnormity.’
‘Instance, instance!’
‘Hem! It was in the days—but all’s one for that. My quarters—no matter for what occasion—were at Dunster, one side the British Channel; and hers on the opposite shore. She had a siren voice—I’ll say so much—and sang me with it daily across the water.’
‘A siren fog-horn rather. Well, you took boat and back—daily?’
‘No, I swam.’
‘My God! Fifteen miles if a yard. And back, too. A very quintuple Leander.’
‘Not back.’
‘O, not back! You disappoint me.’