But every now and then he raised his
head and stared for quite a long time at the round, white, foolish
face of the clock, and whenever he did this his eyes were the eyes of
a young man who has no adequate sense of his surroundings.
The remarkable thing about the new shop was that already, like a bar
or a restaurant, it drew to it a certain group of young men,
punctually, irresistibly. A small group--you could almost count them
on the fingers of one hand--they came from Fleet Street, from the
Temple, from the Junior Journalists' Club over the way. They were
never seen looking in at the windows or hanging about the counter;
they were not the least bit of good to the shop, those customers. But
they were evidently some good to the young man. Whatever they did or
did not do, they always ended by drifting to the platform, to his
table. They sat on it in friendly attitudes and talked to him.
He was so glad to be talked to, so frankly, engagingly, beautifully
glad, that the pathos of it would have been too poignant, the
obligation it almost forced on you too unbearable, but for his power,
his monstrous, mysterious, personal glamour.
It lay partly, no doubt, in his appearance; not, no, not at all, in
his make-up. He wore, like a thousand city clerks, a high collar, a
speckled tie, a straight, dark blue serge suit. But in spite of the
stiffness thus imposed on him, he had, unaccountably, the shy, savage
beauty of an animal untamed, uncaught.
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