He raised his hands above his head, as if by way of a wind-up to his unfinished sentence.
The passers-by stared at the old man talking to himself and gesticulating on the pavement, wondering, perhaps, if he was drunk or if he was merely mad.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
[THE VARIOUS MOODS OF A GENTLEMAN OF FASHION.]
Mr. Townsend was shaving himself. Advancing his face an inch or two nearer his shaving-glass, with his fingers he smoothed his chin.
"Very awkward," he said. "Very!"
The allusion could scarcely have been to the process in which he was engaged. Everything had gone with smoothness. Not even a scratch had marred the perfect peace.
Mr. Townsend concluded that his chin was as clean shaven as it possibly could be. He put his razor down. He took up a cigarette. He lighted it.
"Exceedingly awkward!"
As he murmured the iteration, seating himself in an armchair, he selected an open letter from among a heap of others which lay on a little table at his side. The letter he had selected was unmistakably a feminine production. It was written in a large, bold, running hand, on paper which was as stiff as cardboard.