And all creators of things artistic are, basically, sentimentalists.
Querida's almond-shaped, velvet eyes had done their share for him in his time; they were merely part of a complex machinery which, included many exquisitely adjusted parts which could produce at will such phenomena as temporary but genuine sympathy and emotion: a voice controlled and modulated to the finest nuances; a grace of body and mind that resembled inherent delicacy; a nervous receptiveness and intelligence almost supersensitive in its recognition of complicated ethical problems.

It was a machinery which could make of him any manner of man which the opportunism of the particular moment required.

Yet, with all this, in every nerve and bone and fibre he adored material and intellectual beauty, and physical suffering in others actually distressed him.
Now, reviewing matters, deeply interested to find the microscopic obstruction which had so abruptly stopped the machinery of destiny for him, he was modest enough and sufficiently liberal-minded to admit to himself that Alma Hind-Willet was the exception that proved this rule.
There _were_ women so constructed that they had become essentially unresponsive.

Alma was one.

But, he concluded that if he lived a thousand years he was not likely to encounter another.
And the following afternoon he called upon Mrs.Hind-Willet's understudy, the blue-eyed little Countess d'Enver.
Helene d'Enver was superintending the definite closing of her beautiful duplex apartments--the most beautiful in the great chateau-like, limestone building.