wen's attractiveness concentrated in his sparkling eyes and
his manner, which was at once courteous and manly. He told Mr. Innes
that he had heard of his concerts that morning at the office of the
_Wagnerian Review_, and Mr. Innes indulged in his habitual dream of a
wealthy patron who would help him to realise his musical ambitions. Sir
Owen had just bought the periodical, he intended to make it an organ of
advanced musical culture, and would like to include a criticism of these
concerts. Mr. Innes begged Sir Owen to come into the concert-room. But
while taking off his coat, Sir Owen mentioned what he had heard
regarding Mr. Innes's desire to revive the vocal masses of the sixteenth
century at St. Joseph's, and the interest of this conversation delayed
them a little in the passage.

The baronet's evening clothes were too well cut for those of a poet, a
designer of wall paper, or a journalist, and his hands were too white
and well cared for at the nails. His hair was pale brown, curling a
little at the ends, and carefully brushed and looking as if it had been
freshened by some faintest application of perfumed essence. Three pearl
studs fastened his shirt front, and his necktie was tied in a butterfly
bow. He displayed some of the nonchalant ease which wealth and position
create, smiled a little on catching sight of the jersey worn by a lady
who had neglected to fasten the back of her bodice, and strove to
decipher the impression the faces conveyed to him. He grew aware of that
flitting anxiety which is inseparable from the task of finding a daily
living, and that pathos which tells of fidelity to idea and abstinence
from gross pleasure. A young man, who stood apart, in a carefully
studied attitude, a dark lock of hair falling over his forehead, amused
him, and the young man in the chair next Sir Owen wore a threadbare coat
and clumsy boots, and sat bolt upright. Sir Owen pitied him and imagined
him working all day in some obscure employment, finding his life's
pleasure once a week in a score by Bach. Catching sight of a priest's
profile, a look of contempt appeared on his face.

He was of his class, he had lived its life and lived it still, in a
measure, but from the beginning his ideas and tastes had been superior
to those of a merely fashionable man. At five-and-twenty he had
purchased a Gainsborough, and at thirty he had spent a large sum of
money in exhuming some sonatas of Bach from the dust in which they were
lyin