Dinner, it might be feared, was no immutable feature of Mr. Kite’s day.  He had a starved aspect; his long limbs were appallingly meagre; as he strode along, his clothing, thin and disreputable, flapped about him.  But his countenance showed nothing whatever of sourness, or of grim endurance.  Nor did he appear to be in a feeble state of health; for all his emaciation, his step was firm and he held himself tolerably upright.  One thing was obvious, that at Olga’s side he forgot his ills.  Each time he glanced at her, a strange beautiful smile passed like a light over his hard features, a smile of infinite melancholy, yet of infinite tenderness.  The voice in which he addressed her was invariably softened to express something more than homage.

They had the habit of walking side by side, and could keep silence without any feeling of restraint.  Kite now and then uttered some word or ejaculation, to which Olga paid no heed; it was only his way, the trick of a man who lived much alone, and who conversed with visions.

On ascending to the room in Great Portland Street, they found Miss Bonnicastle hard at work on a design of considerable size, which hung against the wall.  This young lady, for all her sportiveness, was never tempted to jest at the expense of Mr. Kite; removing a charcoal holder from her mouth, she nodded pleasantly, and stood aside to allow the melancholy man a view of her work.

“Astonishing vigour!” said Kite, in his soft, sincere voice.  “How I envy you!”

Miss Bonnicastle laughed with self-deprecation.  She, no less than Olga Hannaford, credited Kite with wonderful artistic powers; in their view, only his constitutional defect of energy, his incorrigible dreaminess, stood between him and great achievement.  The evidence in support of their faith was slight enough; a few sketches, a hint in crayon, or a wash in water-colour, were all he had to show; but Kite belonged to that strange order of men who, seemingly without effort or advantage of any kind, awaken the interest and gain the confidence of certain women.  Even Mrs. Hannaford, though a mother’s reasons set her against him, had felt this seductive quality in Olga’s lover, and liked though she could not approve of him.  Powers of fascination in a man very often go together with lax principle, if not with active rascality; Kite was an instance to the contrary.  He had a quixotic sensitiveness, a morbid instinct of honour.  If it is true that virile force, preferably with a touch of the brutal, has a high place in the natural woman’s heart, none the less does an ideal of male purity, of the masculine subdued to gentle virtues, make strong appeal to the imagination in her sex.  To the everyday man, Kite seemed a mere pale grotesque, a creature of flabby foolishness.  But Olga Hannaford was not the only girl who had dreamed of devoting her life to him.  If she could believe his assurance (and she all but did believe it), for her alone had he felt anything worthy to be called love, to her alone had he spoken words of tenderness.  The high-tide of her passion had long since ebbed; yet she knew that Kite still had power over her, power irresistible, if he chose to exercise it, and the strange fact that he would not, that, still loving her, he did not seem to be jealous for her love in return, often moved her to bitterness.