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They often went to have tea at a shop in Parliament Street,
because Dunsford admired one of the young women who
waited. Philip did not find anything attractive in her. She
was tall and thin, with narrow hips and the chest of a boy.
‘No one would look at her in Paris,’ said Philip scorn-
fully.
‘She’s got a ripping face,’ said Dunsford.
‘What DOES the face matter?’
She had the small regular features, the blue eyes, and the
broad low brow, which the Victorian painters, Lord Leigh-
ton, Alma Tadema, and a hundred others, induced the
world they lived in to accept as a type of Greek beauty. She
seemed to have a great deal of hair: it was arranged with pe-
culiar elaboration and done over the forehead in what she
called an Alexandra fringe. She was very anaemic. Her thin
lips were pale, and her skin was delicate, of a faint green co-
lour, without a touch of red even in the cheeks. She had very
good teeth. She took great pains to prevent her work from
spoiling her hands, and they were small, thin, and white.
She went about her duties with a bored look.
Dunsford, very shy with women, had never succeeded in
getting into conversation with her; and he urged Philip to
help him.
‘All I want is a lead,’ he said, ‘and then I can manage for
myself.’
Philip, to please him, made one or two remarks, but she
answered with monosyllables. She had taken their measure.
They were boys, and she surmised they were students. She
had no use for them. Dunsford noticed that a man with san-

Of Human Bondage