Vivian's acquaintance with the Herons dated from his first arrival in London, six years ago, when he boarded with them for a few months. The disorder of the household had proved too great a trial to his fastidious tastes to be borne for a longer space of time. He had, however, formed a firm friendship with the whole family, especially with Percival; and for the last three or four years the two young men had occupied rooms in the same house and virtually lived together. To anyone who knew the characters of the friends, their friendship was somewhat remarkable. Vivian's fault was an excess of polish and refinement; he attached unusual value to matters of mere taste and culture. Possibly this was the link which really attached him to Percival Heron, who was a man of considerable intellectual power, although possessed sometimes by a sort of irrepressible brusqueness and roughness of manner, with which he could make himself exceedingly disagreeable even to his friends. Percival was taller, stronger, broader about the shoulders, deeper in the chest, than Vivian--in fact, a handsomer man in all respects. Well-cut features, pale, but healthy-looking; brilliant, restless, dark eyes; thick brown hair and moustache; a well-knit, vigorous frame, which gave no sign as yet of the stoutness to which it inclined in later years, these were points that made his appearance undeniably striking and attractive. A physiognomist might, however, have found something to blame as well as to praise in his features. There was an ominous upright line between the dark brows, which surely told of a variable temper; the curl of the laughing lips, and the fall of the heavy moustache only half concealed a curious over-sensitiveness in the lines of the too mobile mouth. It was not the face of a great thinker nor of a great saint, but of a humorous, quick-witted, impatient man, of wide intelligence, and very irritable nervous organisation. The air of genial hilarity which he could sometimes wear was doubtless attractive to a man of Vivian's reserved temperament. Percival's features beamed with good humour--he laughed with his whole heart when anything amused him. Vivian used to look at him in wonder sometimes, and think that Percival was more like a great overgrown boy than a man of eight-and-twenty. On the other hand, Percival said that Vivian was a prig.