"I cannot help thinking of the man and pitying him. He will go into his grave having missed nearly everything in the world."
"Why, the man has enough conceit to make a battalion of Guards happy. He is a greater man in his own opinion than the Premier, the Lord Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief rolled into one."
"But even if he is, Jack, that is not all. The Premier and the Lord Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief, over and above their great successes and fame, have the comforts ordinary men enjoy as well. They are not afflicted in their forms as he is. You say he is interested in me because I remind him of some one. How must it be with an ordinary human heart beating in such a body? Would it not be better for such a man to be born blind than to find his Pallas-Athena, as he calls her?"
The eyes of the girl could not be seen in the darkness of the room; they were full of tears and there were tears in her voice.
Hanbury started, he could not tell why. He exclaimed: "Good Heavens, Dora! you do not mean to tell me that you feel seriously concerned in the love affairs, if there are such things, of this man?"
"No, dear, but I am saddened when I think of them. However absurd it may seem, I cannot help believing this finding of his ideal must be a dreadful misfortune to him."
"Even if you yourself were the ideal, Dora?"
"Even so. But you tell me he had found it before he came here. Of course, dear, my mind is influenced only for the moment by the thought of him and his affairs; but ever since I heard him speak, grotesque as it may seem, my heart has been feeling for him with his poor deformed body and his elaborate gallantry of manner and his Pallas-Athena."
Now was the time to tell Dora of this Miss Grace, but it seemed to him the story was too long for so late an hour, and that it could be told with pleasanter effect when Dora was less exercised about the dwarf. The conversation was too sentimental for him. He had matters of practical moment to speak about, and this subject obstinately blocked the way. The best thing for him to do was to give the matter an every-day aspect at once. "Well, Dora, in any case, Leigh isn't in the first glory of youth, and if he ever does fall in love and marry, it will, I am sure, be no Pallas-Athena, but a barmaid, with practical views, and a notion of keeping an hotel, or something of that kind."
"But how do you think a man with his imagination, his Pallas-Athena, and his incomparable clock and his miracle gold----?"