well-shaped.  Fraulein Anna took an interest in physiognomy, and she made Philip notice afterwards how finely shaped was his skull, and how weak was the lower part of his face.  The head, she remarked, was the head of a thinker, but the jaw lacked character.  Fraulein Anna, foredoomed to a spinster’s life, with her high cheek-bones and large misshapen nose, laid great stress upon character.  While they talked of him he stood a little apart from the others, watching the noisy party with a good-humoured but faintly supercilious expression.  He was tall and slim.  He held himself with a deliberate grace.  Weeks, one of the American students, seeing him alone, went up and began to talk to him.  The pair were oddly contrasted:  the American very neat in his black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers, thin and dried-up, with something of ecclesiastical unction already in his manner; and the Englishman in his loose tweed suit, large-limbed and slow of gesture.

Philip did not speak to the newcomer till next day.  They found themselves alone on the balcony of the drawing-room before dinner.  Hayward addressed him.

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Is the food always as bad it was last night?”

“It’s always about the same.”

“Beastly, isn’t it?”

“Beastly.”

Philip had found nothing wrong with the food at all, and in fact had eaten it in large quantities with appetite and enjoyment, but he did not want to show himself a person of so little discrimination as to think a dinner good which another thought execrable.

Fraulein Thekla’s visit to England made it necessary for her sister to do more in the house, and she could not often spare the time for long walks; and Fraulein Cacilie, with her long plait of fair hair and her little snub-nosed face, had of late shown a certain disinclination for society.  Fraulein Hedwig was gone, and Weeks, the American who generally accompanied them on their rambles, had set out for a tour of South Germany.  Philip was left a good deal to himself.  Hayward sought his acquaintance; but Philip had an unfortunate trait:  from shyness or from some atavistic inheritance of the cave-dweller, he always disliked people on first acquaintance; and it was not till he became used to them that he got over his first impression.  It made him difficult of access.  He received Hayward’s advances very shyly, and when Hayward asked him one day to go for a walk he accepted only because he could not think of a civil excuse.  He made his usual apology, angry with himself for the flushing cheeks he could not control, and trying to carry it off with a laugh.

“I’m afraid I can’t walk very fast.”

“Good heavens, I don’t walk for a wager.  I prefer to stroll.  Don’t you remember the chapter in Marius where Pater talks of the gentle exercise of walking as the best incentive to conversation?”