Psychic Phenomena by Maxwell Bodenheim — Read

Carl Dell and Anita Starr were speaking of a dead woman who had influenced their eyes. She had also refined their heads to a chill protest. Their faces, involved and disconsolate, had not solved her absence, and their voices were freighted with a primitive martyrdom. Carl was fencing with the end of his youth. His body held that inpenetrable cringing which pretends to ignore the coming of middle age and is only betrayed by rare gestures. He was tall, with a slenderness that barely escaped being feminine. The upper part of his face was scholarly and the lower part roguish, and the two gave him the effect of a sprite who has become erudite but still retains the memory of his former identity. His protruding eyes were embarrassed, as though someone behind them had unexpectedly pushed them from a refuge. With immense finesse they apologised for intruding upon the world. It is almost tautology to say that they were gray. His small brown moustache had a candidly misplaced air as it touched the thin bacchanale of his lips. It was a mourner at the feast.

Anita Starr's form would have seemed stout but for the sweeping discipline of its lines, but this careful suppression ended in a riot when it came to her face. Her face was a small, lyrical revel that had terminated in a fight. Her nose and chin were strident but her cheeks and mouth were subtlely unassuming. Her blue eyes brilliantly and impartially aided both sides of the conflict. Glistening spirals of reddish brown hair courted her head.