The speaker fixed his sleepy blue eyes upon Leander Prawle while he thus spoke. A slight smile touched his lips, leaving a faint dimple in either smooth oval cheek. He was certainly very handsome, in an unconventional, audacious way. His collar gave a lower glimpse of his firm yet soft throat than usage ordinarily sanctions; the backward wave of his hair was certainly against any conceded form. He had been made known to Pauline as Mr. Arthur Trevor, and she had felt surprised at his name being so English; she had expected to find it French; Mr. Trevor had appeared to her extremely French.
"When you speak of Paris and of Gautier," she now said to him, "you really relieve me, Mr. Trevor. I was so prepared, on first meeting you, to find that you were not an American."
"Oh, Trevor is very French," said Leander Prawle coldly.
Trevor laughed, lifting one hand, on the middle finger of which was the tawny tell-tale mark of the confirmed cigarette-smoker.
"And my friend, Prawle," he said, "is enormously English."
"Not English—American," slowly corrected Leander Prawle.
"It is the same thing!" cried Arthur Trevor. "He is cold-blooded, Mrs. Varick," the young gentleman continued, with emphasis and a certain excitement. "We are always fighting, Prawle and I. I tell Prawle that in his own beloved literature, he should have but one model outside of Shakespeare. That is Keats—the sweet, sensuous, adorable Keats."
"I loathe Keats," said Leander Prawle, as if he were repeating some fragment of a litany. "I think him a word-monger."
"Aha," laughed Arthur Trevor, showing his white, sound teeth, "Keats was an immense genius. He knew the art of expression."
"And he expressed nothing," said Leander Prawle.