The pupils
seemed powdered with a strange iridescence. He became more troubled than
before. What did the curious creature want of him! She was neither
coquette nor cocotte, flirtation was not hinted by her intense
expression. He resumed his former position, but her eyes made his
shoulders burn, as if they had sufficient power to bore through them. He
no longer paid any attention to his surroundings. The sermon was like
the sound of far-away falling waters, the worshippers were so many black
marks. Of two things was he aware--the odour of iris and her eyes.
He knew that he was in an overwrought mood. For some weeks this mood had
been descending upon his spirit, like a pall. He had avoided music,
pictures, the opera--which he never regarded as an art; even his
favourite poets he could not read. Nor did he degustate, as was his
daily wont, the supreme prose of the French masters. The pleasures of
robust stomachs, gourmandizing and drinking, were denied him by nature.
He could not sip a glass of wine, and for meat he entertained distaste.
His physique proved him to be of the neurotic temperament--he was very
tall, very slim, of an exceeding elegance, in dress a finical dandy;
while his trim pointed blue-black beard and dark, foreign eyes were the
cause of his being mistaken often for a Frenchman or a Spaniard--which
illusion was not dissipated when he chose to speak their several
tongues.
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