The walls of the room were covered with pictures--the
very ceiling was painted and framed. The people pushed each other a
little, edged about, advanced and retreated, looking at each other with
differing faces--sometimes blandly, unperceivingly, sometimes with a
harshness of contemplation, a kind of cruelty, Ransom thought; sometimes
with sudden nods and grimaces, inarticulate murmurs, followed by a quick
reaction, a sort of gloom. He was now absolutely certain that he was in
the best society. He was carried further and further forward, and saw
that another room stretched beyond the one he had entered, in which
there was a sort of little stage, covered with a red cloth, and an
immense collection of chairs, arranged in rows. He became aware that
people looked at him, as well as at each other, rather more, indeed,
than at each other, and he wondered whether it were very visible in his
appearance that his being there was a kind of exception. He didn't know
how much his head looked over the heads of others, or that his brown
complexion, fuliginous eye, and straight black hair, the leonine fall of
which I mentioned in the first pages of this narrative, gave him that
relief which, in the best society, has the great advantage of suggesting
a topic. But there were other topics besides, as was proved by a
fragment of conversation, between two ladies, which reached his ear
while he stood rather wistfully wondering where Verena Tarrant might be.
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