The Secret City by Hugh Walpole — Read

And yet for the first half-hour it really seemed that it would "go" very well indeed. It had been agreed that it was to be absolutely a "family" party, and Uncle Ivan, Semyonov, and Boris Grogoff were the only additions to our number. Markovitch was there of course, and I saw at once that he was eager to be agreeable and to be the best possible host. As I had often noticed before, there was something pathetic about Markovitch when he wished to be agreeable. He had neither the figure nor the presence with which to be fascinating, and he did not know in the least how to bring out his best points.

Especially when he tried, as he was sometimes ill-advised enough to do, to flirt with young girls, he was a dismal failure. He was intended, by nature, to be mysterious and malevolent, and had he only had a malevolent spirit there would have been no tragedy -- but in the confused welter that he called his soul, malevolence was the least of the elements, and other things -- love, sympathy, twisted self-pity, ambition, courage, and cowardice -- drowned it. He was on his best behaviour tonight, and over the points of his high white collar his peaked, ugly, anxious face peered, appealing to the Fates for generosity.