Mark was not given to gazing at himself in mirrors, but he looked at
himself that night in the mirror of the tiny bedroom, into which the
April air came up sweet and frore from the watermeadows of the Cherwell
close at hand.
"What will you do now?" he asked his reflection. "Yet, you have such a
dark ecclesiastical face that I'm sure you'll be a priest whether you go
to Oxford or not."
Mark was right in supposing his countenance to be ecclesiastical. But it
was something more than that: it was religious. Even already, when he
was barely eighteen, the high cheekbones and deepset burning eyes gave
him an ascetic look, while the habit of prayer and meditation had added
to his expression a steadfast purpose that is rarely seen in people as
young as him. What his face lacked were those contours that come from
association with humanity; the ripeness that is bestowed by long
tolerance of folly, the mellowness that has survived the icy winds of
disillusion. It was the absence of these contours that made Mark think
his face so ecclesiastical; however, if at eighteen he had possessed
contours and soft curves, they would have been nothing but the contours
and soft curves of that rose, youth; and this ecclesiastical bonyness
would not fade and fall as swiftly as that.
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