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