Once while he was gazing into the fire he felt sure that she was examining his profile. He made no pretensions to handsomeness, but he rather prided himself on his nose, the long fine straight nose of the Claverings. His brow was also good, but although his hair was black, his eyes were blue, and he would have preferred to have black eyes, as he liked consistent types. Otherwise he was one of the "black Claverings." Northumbrian in origin and claiming descent from the Bretwaldes, overlords of Britain, the Claverings were almost as fair as their Anglian ancestors, but once in every two or three generations a completely dark member appeared, resurgence of the ancient Briton; sometimes associated with the high stature of the stronger Nordic race, occasionally—particularly among the women—almost squat. Clavering had been spared the small stature and the small too narrow head, but saving his steel blue eyes—trained to look keen and hard—he was as dark as any Mediterranean. His mouth was well-shaped and closely set, but capable of relaxation and looked as if it might once have been full and sensitive. It too had been severely trained. The long face was narrower than the long admirably proportioned head. It was by no means as disharmonic a type as Gora Dwight's; the blending of the races was far more subtle, and when making one of his brief visits to Europe he was generally taken for an Englishman, never for a member of the Latin peoples; except possibly in the north of France, where his type, among those Norman descendants of Norse and Danes, was not uncommon. Nevertheless, although his northern inheritance predominated, he was conscious at times of a certain affinity with the race that two thousand years ago had met and mingled with his own.
He turned his eyes swiftly and met hers. She colored faintly and dropped her lids. Had she lowered those broad lids over a warm glow?
"Now I know what you look like!" he exclaimed, and was surprised to find that his voice was not quite steady. "A Nordic princess."
"Oh! That is the very most charming compliment ever paid me."
"You look a pretty unadulterated type for this late date. I don't mean in color only, of course; there are millions of blondes."
"My mother was a brunette."
"Oh, yes, you are a case of atavism, no doubt. If I were as good a poet as one of my brother columnists I should have written a poem to you long since. I can see you sweeping northward over the steppes of Russia as the ice-caps retreated … reëmbodied on the Baltic coast or the shores of the North Sea … sleeping for ages in one of the Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse Viking … west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove … or as Boadicea—who knows! But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time. I see it—prehistory—as a swaying mass of ghostly multitudes, but always pressing on—on … as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years hence if all histories are destroyed—as no doubt they will be. If I were an epic poet I might possibly find words and rhythm to fit that white vision, but it is wholly beyond the practical vocabulary and mental make-up of a newspaper man of the twentieth century. Some of us write very good poetry indeed, but it is not precisely inspired, and it certainly is not epic. One would have to retire to a cave like Buddha and fast."
"You write singularly pure English, in spite of what seems to me a marked individuality of style, and—ah—your apparent delight in slang!" Her voice was quite even, although her eyes had glowed and sparkled and melted at his poetic phantasma of her past (as what woman's would not?). "I find a rather painful effort to be—what do you call it? highbrow?—in some of your writers."
"The youngsters. I went through that phase. We all do. But we emerge. I mean, of course, when we have anything to express. Metaphysical verbosity is a friendly refuge. But as a rule years and hard knocks drive us to directness of expression.… But poets must begin young. And New York is not exactly a hot-bed of romance."
"Do you think that romance is impossible in New York?" she asked irresistibly.