28 ANGEL PAVEMENT

would probably admit, after reflection, that it would
have been better for him if he had been actually uglier.
As it was, he was just unprepossessing. You would not
have noticed him in a crowd—and a great deal of his
time was spent in a crowd—but if your attention had
been called to him, you would have given him one
glance and then decided that that was enough. He was
obviously neither sick nor starved, yet something about
his appearance, a total lack of colour and bloom, a slight
pastiness and spottiness, the faint grey film that seemed
to cover and subdue him, suggested that all the food he
ate was wrong, all the rooms he sat in, beds he slept in,
and clothes he wore, were wrong, and that he lived in a
world without sun and clean rain and wandering sweet
air. His features were not good nor yet too bad. He
had rather full brown eyes that might have been called
pretty if they had been set in a girl's face; a fairly large
nose that should have been masterful but somehow was
not; a small, still babyish mouth, usually open, and
revealing several big and irregular teeth; and a droop-
ing rather than retreating chin. His blue serge suit
bulged and bagged and sagged and shone, and had obvi-
ously done all these things five days after it had left the
multiple cheap tailors' shop, in the window of which a
companion suit, clothing the wax model of a light-
weight champion, still maliciously challenged Turgis
with its smooth surface and sharp creases every time he
sneaked past it. His soft collar was crumpled, his tie a
little frayed, and there was a pulpy look about his shoes,
Any sensible woman could have compelled him to im-
prove his appearance almost beyond recognition within
a week, and it was quite clear that no sensible woman
took any interest in him*