His features
were delicate enough, his restless mouth was even pretty, and
his carriage graceful. He had little of the coarseness of
industrialism--probably because he was not industrial. His age was
about twenty, and he might have sold _Signals_ in the street, or
run illegal errands for street-bookmakers. At any rate, it was certain
that he was not above earning a chance copper from a customer of the
"Three Tuns." His clear destiny was never to inspire respect or trust,
nor to live regularly (save conceivably in prison), nor to do any
honest daily labour. And if he did not know this, he felt it. All his
movements were those of an outcast who both feared and execrated the
organism that was rejecting him.
Louis, elegant, self-possessed, and superior, passed into the parlour
exactly as if the messenger had been invisible. He was separated from
the messenger by an immeasurable social prestige. He was raised to
such an altitude above the messenger that he positively could not see
the messenger with the naked eye. And yet for one fraction of a second
he had the illusion of being so intimately akin to the messenger
that a mere nothing might have pushed him into those vile clothes
and endowed him with that furtive look and that sinister aspect of
a helot.
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