Moonchild

Chapter2 A PHILOSOPHICAL DISQUISITION UPON THE NATURE OF THE SOUL "THERE is little difference - barring our Occidental subtlety — between Chinese philosophy and English," observed Cyril Grey. "The Chinese bury a man alive in an ant heap; the English introduce him to a woman." Lisa la Giuffria was startled into normality by the words. They were not spoken in jest. And she began to take stock of her surroundings. Cyril Grey himself was radically changed. In fashionable London he had worn a claret-coloured suit, an enormous grey butterfly tie hiding a soft silk collar. In bohemian Paris his costume was diabolically clerical in its formality. A frock coat, tightly buttoned to the body, fell to the knees; its cut was as severe as it was distinguished; the trousers were of sober grey. A big black four-in-hand tie was fastened about a tall uncompromising collar by a cabochon sapphire so dark as to be hardly noticeable. A rimless monocle was fixed in his right eye. His manner had changed to parallel his dress. The supercilious air was gone; the smile was gone. He might have been a diplomatist at the crisis of an empire: he looked even more like a duellist. The studio in which she stood was situated on the Boulevard Arago, below the Sante' prison. It was reached from the road through am archway, which [21] opened upon an oblong patch of garden. Across this, a row of studios nestled; and behind these again were other gardens, one to each studio, whose gates gave on to a tiny pathway. It was not only private — it was rural. One might have been ten miles from the city limits. The studio itself was severely elegant — simplex munditiis; its walls were concealed by dull tapestries. In the centre of the room stood a square carved ebony table, matched by a sideboard in the west and a writing-desk in the