“I’m afraid I must have interrupted your work?” Tarr said with mock ceremony. “No, it’s all right. I was just going to have a rest. I’m rather off colour.” Tarr misunderstood him. “Off colour? What is the matter with colour now?” “No, I mean I’m seedy.” “Oh, ah. Yes.” His eyes still fixed on the ground, Lowndes pottered about, like a dog. As with most educated people who “do” anything, and foresee analysis and fame, he was biographically minded. A poor man, he did his Boswelling himself. His self-characterization, proceeding whenever he was not alone, was as follows: “A fussy and exacting man, slightly avuncular, strangely, despite the fineness and amplitude of his character, minute, precious, and tidy.” (In this way he made a virtue of his fuss.) To show how the general illusion worked in a particular case: “He had been disturbed in his ‘work’ by Tarr, or had just emerged from that state of wonderful concentration he called ‘work.’ He could not at once bend himself to more general things. His nerves drove him from object to object. But he would soon be quiet.” Tarr looked on with an ugly patience. “Lowndes, I have come to ask you for a little piece of advice.” Lowndes was flattered and relished the mystery. “Ye-es,” he said, smiling, in a slow, ‘sober,’ professional sing-song. “Or rather, for an opinion. What is your opinion of German women?” Lowndes had spent two years in Berlin and Münich. Many of his friends were Austrian. “German women? But I must know first why you ask me that question. You see, it’s a wide subject.” “A wide subject—wide. Yes, very good! Ha ha!—Well, it is like this. I think that they are superior to Englishwomen. That is a very dangerous opinion to hold, as there are so many German women knocking about just now.—I want to rid myself of it.—Can you help me?” Lowndes mused on the ground. Then he looked up brightly. “No, I can’t. Because I share it!” “Lowndes, I’m surprised at you. I never thought you were that sort of man!” “How do you mean?” “Perhaps you can help me nevertheless. Our ideas on females may not be the same.” Tarr always embarrassed him. Lowndes huddled himself tensely together, worked at his pipe, and met Tarr’s jokes painfully. He hesitated to sally forth and drive the joke away. “What are your ideas on females?” he asked in a moment. “Oh, I think they ought to be convex if you are concave—stupid if you are intelligent, hot if you are cold, frigid if you are volcanic. Always white all over, clothes, underclothes, skin and all.—My ideas do not extend much beyond that.” Lowndes organized Tarr’s statement, with a view to an adequate and light reply. He gnawed at his pipe. “Well, German women are usually convex. There are also concave ones. There are cold ones and hot ones.” He looked up. “It all seems to depend what _you_ are like!” “I am cold; inclined to be fat; _forte tête_; and swarthy, as you see.”