d you might be good enough
to see to my affairs for me. I've got a letter from him...."

Decidedly the man had an air. He slid the letter across the table as if
he did not care in the least whether anybody ever picked it up and
retreated into a courteous inattention. She felt a little cross at Mr.
Philip for not showing that Edinburgh too understands the art of
arrogance, for opening the letter so clumsily and omitting to say the
nice friendly thing. Well, if he was put about it was his own fault for
not going on with the chop, it being well known to all educated persons
that one cannot work on an empty stomach. If this man would go soon she
would run down to Mrs. Powell and get her to heat up the chop again. She
eyed him anxiously to see if he looked the kind of person who left when
one wanted him to, and found herself liking him for the way he slouched
in his chair, as though he wanted to mitigate as much as possible his
terrifying strength and immensity. What for did a fine man like him help
to make cordite, the material of militarism, which is the curse of the
nations? She wished he could have heard R.J. Campbell speak on peace the
other night at the Synod Hall; it was fine. But probably he was a
Conservative, for these big men were often unprogressive. She examined
him carefully out of the corner of her eye to estimate the chances of
his being brought into the fold of reform by properly selected oratory.
That at least was the character of contemplation she intended, but
though she was so young that she believed the enjoyment of any sensory
impression sheer waste unless it was popped into the mental stockpot and
made the basis of some sustaining moral soup, she found herself just
looking at him. His black hair lay in streaks and rings on his rain-wet
forehead and gave him an abandoned and magical air, like the ghost of a
drowned man risen for revelry; his dark gold skin told a traveller's
tale of far-off pleasurable weather; and the bare hand that lay on his
knee was patterned like a snake's belly with brown marks, doubtless the
stains of his occupation; and his face was marked with an expression
that it vexed her she could not put a name to, for if at her age she
could not read human nature like a book she never would. It was not
hunger, for it was serene, and it was not greed, for it was austere, and
yet it certainly signified that he habitually made upon life some urgent
demand that was not wholly intellectual and