CHAPTER IX
On the afternoon of the day upon which this occurred, Coombe was
standing in Feather's drawing-room with a cup of tea in his hand
and wearing the look of a man who is given up to reflection.
"I saw Mrs. Muir today for the first time for several years," he
said after a silence. "She is in London with the boy."
"Is she as handsome as ever?"
"Quite. Hers is not the beauty that disappears. It is line and
bearing and a sort of splendid grace and harmony."
"What is the boy like?"
Coombe reflected again before he answered.
"He is--amazing. One so seldom sees anything approaching physical
perfection that it strikes one a sort of blow when one comes upon
it suddenly face to face."
"Is he as beautiful as all that?"
"The Greeks used to make statues of bodies like his. They often
called them gods--but not always. The Creative Intention plainly
was that all human beings should be beautiful and he is the
expression of it."
Feather was pretending to embroider a pink flower on a bit of
gauze and she smiled vaguely.
"I don't know what you mean," she admitted with no abasement of
spirit, "but if ever there was any Intention of that kind it has
not been carried out." Her smile broke into a little laugh as she
stuck her needle into her work. "I'm thinking of Henry," she let
drop in addition.
"So was I, it happened," answered Coombe after a second or so of
pause.
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