"It's one of your bad days, my friend," he commented, regarding his own image. "You look all your age, and twelve years more. Draw down those feathered brows, man. Never mind the upright furrow which makes you look stern. Draw them down; and open your eyes; and look alert. Do something to counteract the tender thin line of that mouth. You mustn't let yourself relax like this. It brings out your wrinkles, and shews the sparseness of your hair. If you had an inch more thigh, and say a couple of inches more shin, you might look people down a little more: but with that meek subservient aspect--how Luckock used to chaff about it!--no wonder everyone takes advantage of you. What's the good of having your fastidious mind clearly written on that fastidious mouth if you don't insist on behaving fastidiously. Cultivate the art of looking as though you were about to say No. You always can say Yes after No. But, if you begin with Yes, as you always do, you prevent yourself from ever saying No. That's why everyone can swindle you. You're far too anxious to give way. Buck up a bit, you ugly little thing! Ugly as you are, you're neither vulgar nor common-place. Straighten your back, and open your eyes wide, and pull yourself together." He put the mirror in its place; and again cast a glance round the room, seeking something to read, something, anything, that was not too recent in his mind. He picked up at random one of the rejected novels. It was called _Donovan_. He remembered having seen (in an ex-tea-pedlar's magazine) a print of the writer thereof. He also remembered that he had found her self-conscious pose and labial conformation intensely antipathetic. His sense of beauty was a great deal more than acute. Let his predilection (which was for reticent expert virtue in the male and for innate delicate modesty in the female) once be satisfied, and the door to his favour lay open. "However," he argued with himself, "she sells her books by tens of thousands while we don't sell ours by tens of hundreds. We'll have a look at her work, and see how she does it." He ate his bread and milk; and seriously and deliberately set himself to dissect and analyse the book. The manner of the portrayal of a youth, of an abnormal type of youth, the Sentient-Modest type, at once disgusted him by its inadequacy and superficiality. The male human animal is omnipresent: it is not difficult for an observant and careful writer to describe the γνωριμωτερον φυσει, things as they appear. But the author's sex had prevented her from knowing, and therefore, from describing the γνωριμωτερον ἡμιν, things as they are. It is doubtful whether Man ever mentally knew Woman. It is certain that Woman never knew Man: except in cases of occession--the author of _The Gadfly_ for example. He found the image of Donovan fairly convincing: not so the real. Donovan, in his eponymous history, obviously was the creation of a good sweet-minded woman, who created him in her own image.