She looked strangely febrile and mental in the midst of the many appliances for developing the body. Rosamund, with her splendid physique and glowing health, would have crowned the gymnasium appropriately, have looked like the divine huntress transplanted to a modern city where still the cult of the body drew its worshipers. The Arcadian mountains—Olympia in Elis,—Jenkins’s “gym” in the Harrow Road—differing shrines but the cult was the same. Only the conditions of worship were varied. Dion glanced down at Mrs. Clarke. Never had she seemed more curiously exotic. Yet she did not look wholly out of place; and it occurred to him that a perfectly natural person never looks wholly out of place anywhere.
“Face to the wall, sir!” cried Jenkins.
Jimmy found time for a breathless and half-inquiring smile at Dion as he turned and prepared for the most difficult feat.
“His jaw always does something extraordinary in this exercise,” said Mrs. Clarke. “It seems to come out and go in again with a click. Jenkins says it’s because Jimmy gets his strength from there.”
“I know. Mine used to do just the same.”
“Jimmy doesn’t mind. It amuses him.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“He finishes with this.”
“Already?” said Dion, surprised.
“You must have been a little late. How did you come?”