Perhaps he thought he was studying her—for the compact by mutual consent was already in force—and certainly his eyes were constantly upon her, taking, as no doubt he supposed, a cold and impersonal measure of her symmetry. Calmly, and with utter detachment, he measured her slender waist, her soft little hands; noting the fresh, sweet lips, the clear, prettily shaped eyes, the delicate throat, the perfect little Greek head with its thick, golden hair.
And all the while he held forth about literature and its true purpose; about what art really is;[136] about his own art, his own literature, and his own self.
And the girl was really fascinated.
She had seen, at a distance, such men. When Brown had named himself to her, she had recognised the name with awe, as a fashionable and wealthy name known to Gotham.
Yet, had Brown known it, neither his eloquence nor his theories, nor his aims, were what fascinated her. But it was his boyish enthusiasm, his boyish intolerance, his immaturity, his happy certainty of the importance of what concerned himself.
He was so much a boy, so much a man, such a candid, unreasonable, eager, selfish, impulsive, portentous, and delightfully illogical mixture of boy and man that the combination fascinated every atom of womanhood in her—and at moments as the night wore on, she found herself listening perilously close to the very point of sympathy.
He appeared to pay no heed to the flight of time. The big stars frosted Heaven; the lagoon was silvered by them; night winds stirred the orange bloom; oleanders exhaled a bewitching perfume.
As he lay there in his rocking chair beside her, it seemed to him that he had known her intimately[137] for years—so wonderfully does the charm of self-revelation act upon human reason. For she had said almost nothing about herself. Yet, it was becoming plainer to him every moment that never in all his life had he known any woman as he already knew this young girl.
"It is wonderful," he said, lying back in his chair and looking up at the stars, "how subtle is sympathy, and how I recognise yours. I think I understand you perfectly already."
"Do you?" she said.