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.