Chapter 3 - Page 2

earnestness.

Next to Mary a small gaunt man was sitting, rigid and erect in
his chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of those
extinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, his
dark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there was
nothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of his
wrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were the
hands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard's
disconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin,
fluty, and dry. Henry Wimbush's school-fellow and exact
contemporary, Mr. Scogan looked far older and, at the same time,
far more youthfully alive than did that gentle aristocrat with
the face like a grey bowler.

Mr. Scogan might look like an extinct saurian, but Gombauld was
altogether and essentially human. In the old-fashioned natural
histories of the 'thirties he might have figured in a steel
engraving as a type of Homo Sapiens--an honour which at that time
commonly fell to Lord Byron. Indeed, with more hair and less
collar, Gombauld would have been completely Byronic--more than
Byronic, even, for Gombauld was of Provencal descent, a black-
haired young corsair of thirty, with flashing teeth and luminous
large dark eyes. Denis looked at him enviously. He was jealous
of his talent: if only he wrote verse as well as Gombauld
painted pictures! Still more, at the moment, he envied Gombauld
his looks, his vitality, his easy confidence of manner. Was it
surprising that Anne should like him? Like him?--it might even
be something worse, Denis reflected bitterly, as he walked at
Priscilla's side down the long grass terrace.

Between Gombauld and Mr. Scogan a very much lowered deck-chair
presented its back to the new arrivals as they advanced towards
the tea-table. Gombauld was leaning over it; his face moved
vivaciously; he smiled, he laughed, he made quick gestures with
his hands. From the depths of the chair came up a sound of soft,
lazy laughter. Denis started as he heard it. That laughter--how
well he knew it! What emotions it evoked in him! He quickened
his pace.

In her low deck-chair Anne was nearer to lying than to sitting.
Her long, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless and
indolent grace. Within its setting of light brown hair her face
had a pretty regularity that was almost doll-like. And indeed
there were moments when she seemed nothing more than a doll; when
the oval face, with its long-lashed, pale blue eyes, expressed
nothing; when it was no more than a lazy mask of wax. She was
Henry Wimbush's own niece; that bowler-like countenance was one
of the Wimbush heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in its
female members as a blank doll-face. But