And
I--I saw him only day before yesterday for the first time. What _can_ I
know about him? I've no experience in reading characters of men. The
dear old Abbe and a few masters in the school are the only ones I have a
bowing acquaintance with--except "Sissy" Williams, who doesn't count.
It's dangerous to trust to one's instincts, no doubt, for it's so
difficult to be sure a wish isn't disguising itself as instinct, in
rouge and a golden wig.
But then, there's the man's profile, which is of the knight-of-old,
Crusader pattern, a regular hook to hang respect upon, though I'd be
doing it injustice if I let you imagine it's _shaped_ like a hook. It
isn't; it's quite beautiful; and you find yourself furtively,
semi-consciously sketching it in air with your forefinger as you look at
it. It suggests race, and _noblesse oblige_, and a long line of soldier
ancestors, and that sort of thing, such as you used to say survived
visibly among the English aristocracy and English peasantry (not in the
mixed-up middle classes) more markedly than anywhere else. That must
mean some correspondence in character, mustn't it? Or can it be a mask,
handed down by noble ancestry to cover up moral defects in a degenerate
descendant?
Am I gabbling school-girl gush, or am I groping toward light? You know
what I want to say, anyhow.
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