hands deep in his pockets, his eyes morosely fixed on space.

At the Alston dinner an idea had germinated in his mind. It was only a
seed at first, then it began to grow and had now assumed a definite
shape. At first he had toyed with it, viewed it from different angles as
something fantastic and irrelevant, but nevertheless having a piquancy of
its own. Then his ill-luck and that necessary facing of the situation
made him regard it more closely, compelled him to award it a serious
consideration. He did not like it; it had almost no point of appeal; it
was not the sort of thing, had chance been kinder, he would ever have
contemplated. But it was inescapable, the angel with the flaming sword
planted in his path.

Reluctant, with dragging feet, he had gone to call on the Alston girls.
There had been several visits before that in return for continued
hospitalities; but this was the first of what might be called a second
series, the first after the acceptance of his idea. It had driven him to
it, hounded him on like Orestes hounded by the furies. When he got there
he saw behind the hounding the hand of fate, for instead of finding both
sisters at home or both sisters out, he found Chrystie in and alone. She
had talked bashfully, a shy-eyed novice with blush-rose cheeks and
fingers feeling cold in the pressure of farewell. The hand of fate
pointed to her. If it had been the other sister the hand would have
pointed in vain. From the start he had felt the fundamental thing in
Lorry--character, brain, vision, whatever you like to call it--upon which
his flatteries and blandishments would have been fruitless, arrows
falling blunted against a glittering armor. But this child, this
blushing, perturbed, unformed creature, as soft and fiberless as a skein
of her own hair, was fruit for his plucking.