As they moved on, a man smiled at Lennox, who, without stopping, gave
him a hand.
He was an inkbeast. But there was nothing commercial in his appearance.
Ordinarily, he looked like a somnambulist. When he was talking, he
resembled a comedian. In greeting Lennox he seemed to be in a pleasant
dream. The crowd swallowed him.
"Who was that?" Mrs. Austen enquired.
"Ten Eyck Jones."
"The writer?" asked this lady, who liked novels, but who preferred to
live them.
Meanwhile Paliser was talking to Cassy Cara and the Tamburini. The
latter listened idly, with her evil smile. Yet Paliser's name was very
evocative. The syllables had fallen richly on her ears.
Cassy Cara had not heard them and they would have conveyed nothing to
her if she had. She was a slim girl, with a lot of auburn hair which was
docked. The careless-minded thought her pretty. She was what is far
rarer; she was handsome. Her features had the surety of an intaglio.
Therewith was an air and a look that were not worldly or even superior,
but which, when necessary as she sometimes found it, could reduce a man,
and for that matter a woman, to proportions really imperceptible.
A little beauty and a little devil, thought Paliser, who was an expert.
But leisurely, in his Oxford voice, he outlined for her a picture less
defined. "You remind me of something."