The Belfry

"I don't say there was anything unmanly about Jevons's figure -- he wasn't noticeably undersized -- or about his mouth and jaw. After all, I knew a great Army general with a mouth and jaw like that, and he was one of the handsomest figures in the service. I'm not hinting at anything like effeminacy in Jevons -- only at a certain oddity that really saved him. If he'd been handsome he'd have been dreadful. His flush, his decorative eyes, his dark eyebrows and eyelashes, his sleek, light brown hair, would have made him vulgar.

"I dwell on these physical details because -- well, at some point I found myself continually looking at him as if to see where his charm lay.

"To see, I suppose, what "she" sees in him."

May Sinclair (1870-1947), author of "The Divine Fire," writes with her typical wit and style of two journalists desperately vying for the same woman.