"How can I guess?"
"She said 'Beauty and the Beast.'" Feathers laughed. "I suppose I did look rather like an old man of the sea—wet clothes are not becoming—to anyone," he added, with an amused memory of the object Chris had looked in his saturated dress suit.
91 "It was a horrible thing to have said!" Marie cried hotly. "She must have been a detestable woman."
"Oh, I don't know—I think I rather liked it."
"Did you? How queer! Why?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Because I am a queer sort of chap, I suppose. I remember a woman once telling me that I wore the ugliest clothes she had ever seen." He glanced down at his baggy tweed suit. "Do you know that pleased me more than it would have done had she told me I was the smartest man in London."
Marie laughed.
"In the story of 'Beauty and the Beast,'" she said, "the Beast turned out to be a Fairy Prince, you know."
Feathers moved away from the railings and stood looking down the crowded promenade.