His coarsely coloured face passed for beauty, his insolence for strength of character, even for wit, among those men and women with whom he consorted. His outward manner had something of the off-handed ease of the inferior actor, who drinks, and tells tales, and remarks upon the passing women. But he had little of the actor’s good humour. He had, instead, that air of insolent superiority which makes the inferior soul, arrogant always, like the dunghill cock, clamorous of the glory of dung. In company he was rude to all whom he did not fear. He was more rude to women than to men, partly because he feared them less; but partly because his physical tastes were gross, so that he found pleasure in all horse-play--such as the snatching of handkerchiefs or trinkets, or even of kisses--in gaining which he had to touch or maul his victims, whether protesting or acquiescent. Women were attracted by him, perhaps because he frightened them physically. His love affairs were not unlike the love affairs of python and gazelle. “They like it,” he would say. “They like it.” To men whom he did not fear, to those of them, that is, who had no advantage of fortune or position from which he could hope to profit, he acted with studied rudeness, with the unintellectual unvaried rudeness of a school bully, particularly if they displayed any little sally of wit, any fondness for art, any fineness of intelligence beyond him. It is possible to think of him with pity, as of one born out of his due time and out of his right circle. He was a cad, born a gentleman.