Mosscrop waved his hand in smiling reassurance.
“But now for that famous first impression of yours.”
She narrowed her eyelids to look at him, and he found her glance invested with something like tenderness of expression. Her head was tilted a bit to one side, so that the light from the window fell full upon the face. It was a more beautiful face than he had thought, with exquisitely faint and shell-like gradations of colour upon the temples and below the ears, where the strange but lovely primrose hair began. A soft rose-tint had come into her cheeks, which had seemed pallid an hour before. The whole countenance was rounded and mellowed and beautified in his eyes, as he answered her lingering, approving gaze.
“My impression?” she spoke slowly, and with none of the assurance which had marked her earlier deliverance. “Well, you know, I don’t feel as if I knew men any more than I did before. I only know one man—a very, very little. I don’t believe that other men are at all like him, or else we should hear about it. The world would be full of it. No one would talk of anything else. But the man I do know—that is, a little—well, I’d rather know him than all the women that ever were born, even if I had to be afraid of him all the while into the bargain.”
Mosscrop laughed.
“We did well to label it in advance as a first impression. It is the judgment of a babe just opening its eyes. My dear child, I’m afraid this isn’t your birthday, after all. You’re clearly not a year old yet.”
“You always joke, but I’m in sober earnest.” She indeed spoke almost solemnly, and with an impressive fervour in her voice. “You do impress me just like that. I wish you’d believe that I’m saying exactly what I feel. Mind, I expressly said, I don’t suppose for a minute that other men are like you.”
“No, you’re right there,” he broke in. Her manner, even more than the speech, affected him curiously. He drained his liqueur at a gulp, stared out of the window, fidgetted on his chair, finally rose to his feet.
“You’re right there!” he reiterated, biting his cigar and thrusting his hands deep in his pockets. She would have risen also, but he signed to her to sit still. “Other men are not like me, and they can thank God that they’re not. They know enough to keep sober; I don’t. They are of some intelligent use in the world; I’m not. They lead cleanly and decent lives, they control themselves, they make names for themselves, they do things which are of some benefit at least to somebody. Ah-h! You hit the nail on the head. They are different from, me!”
She gazed up at him, dumb with sheer surprise. He took a few aimless steps up and down, halted to scowl out of the window at the signs opposite, and then flung himself into the chair again. Sprawling his elbows on the table, he bent forward and fastened upon her a look of such startled intensity that she trembled under it and drew back.