she would look, standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom.  Calm, proprietary, kind!  He passed them and walked behind a second less distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same sensation.  It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a circle—­couple after couple all the same.  No heads, toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere.  In the sea of their environments they were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were all respectable.  And he himself as respectable as any.

He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and poured out before Antonia some of his impressions: 

. . . .  Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that’s what ’s the matter with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species—­as mean as caterpillars.  To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won’t really hurt us, is what we’re all after.  There’s something about human nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem to me to be . . . .

He paused, biting his pen.  Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel him to see a doctor for writing in that style?  How would the world go round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability, and the lack of sympathy?

He looked out of the open window.  Down in the street a footman was settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.

He got up and walked up and down.  His rooms, in a narrow square skirting Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a man of means.  Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in a very miscellaneous way.  They were not bare, but close inspection revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and there was absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in it.  His goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard acquisitions of a pressing need.  Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but everything was somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never rebuked a servant.  Above all, there was nothing that indicated hobbies.

Three days later he had her answer to his letter: 

. . .  I don’t think I understand what you mean by “the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem to be”; one must be healthy to be perfect, must n’t one?  I don’t like unhealthy people.  I had to play on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me feel unhappy.  I’ve been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got the back-handed lifting stroke at last—­hurrah! . . .