Читать книгу White Magic. A Novel онлайн

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Big is the word most nearly expressing that unusual appearance of his. He was tall and broad and powerful. His features were large, bold, handsome. The dark coloring of skin and hair and eyes added to the impression of bigness. It was in part a matter of real size, but only in part. Not the most casual glance could have reported a judgment of mere bulk. He seemed big because his countenance, his whole body, seemed an effort of Nature adequately to express a big nature. Herbert Spencer uttered about the most superb compliment one human being ever paid another when he said of George Eliot that she suggested “a large intelligence moving freely.” There was in Roger Wade this quality of the great bird high in the blue ether above the grime and littleness of conventional life. His looks had caused him more than a little trouble—of which he was not in the least aware. For a large part of his charm lay in his childlike unconsciousness of himself—a trait less rare in painters and sculptors than in any other class of men of genius, probably because their work compels them to concentrate constantly upon persons and things external and in no way related to their own ego. Had Roger been physically vain, beyond doubt his good looks would have ruined him. The envy of men and the infatuation of women would have made escape impossible. As it was, he did his work, ignored his enemies, and neither enslaved nor was enslaved by such women as drifted into his life—and out again. It is fortunate for men—especially for men who are striving for careers—that women are bred to feebleness of purpose and much prefer being loved to loving, being admired to admiring.