ntellectual incompetence, in
whom the hostess instinct seemed to be abnormally developed.

Capes would come to these teas; he evidently liked to come, and he
would appear in the doorway of the preparation-room, a pleasing note of
shyness in his manner, hovering for an invitation.

From the first, Ann Veronica found him an exceptionally interesting man.
To begin with, he struck her as being the most variable person she had
ever encountered. At times he was brilliant and masterful, talked round
and over every one, and would have been domineering if he had not
been extraordinarily kindly; at times he was almost monosyllabic, and
defeated Miss Garvice's most skilful attempts to draw him out. Sometimes
he was obviously irritable and uncomfortable and unfortunate in his
efforts to seem at ease. And sometimes he overflowed with a peculiarly
malignant wit that played, with devastating effect, upon any topics that
had the courage to face it. Ann Veronica's experiences of men had been
among more stable types--Teddy, who was always absurd; her father,
who was always authoritative and sentimental; Manning, who was always
Manning. And most of the others she had met had, she felt, the same
steadfastness. Goopes, she was sure was always high-browed and slow and
Socratic. And Ramage too--about Ramage there would always be that air of
avidity, that air of knowledge and inquiry, the mixture of things in his
talk that were rather good with things that were rather poor. But one
could not count with any confidence upon Capes.

The five men students were a mixed company. There was a very white-faced
youngster of eighteen who brushed back his hair exactly in Russell's
manner, and was disposed to be uncomfortably silent when he was
near her, and to whom she felt it was only Christian kindness to be
consistently pleasant; and a lax young man of five-and-twenty in navy
blue, who mingled Marx and Bebel with the more orthodox gods of the
biological pantheon. There was a short, red-faced, resolute youth who
inherited an authoritative attitude upon bacteriology from his father;
a Japanese student of unassuming manners who drew beautifully and had
an imperfect knowledge of English; and a dark, unwashed Scotchman
with complicated spectacles, who would come every morning as a sort of
volunteer supplementary demonstrator, look very closely at her work
and her, tell her that her dissections were "fairish," or "very fairish
indeed," or "high above the n