July 28. — Amid the endless procession of
nondescript persons along the streets — who so
often seem only differentiated, and that but
a little, by their clothes — now and again one
seems to perceive an indubitable person. As
I was walking rapidly along near Victoria
Station to-day, absorbed in my own thoughts,,
I chanced to pass closely a figure which in



44 IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS

that brief single flash remains in memory, of
all the undistinguished figures I have passed
during the day, the vision of a Person. It
drew my attention first by a doubt as to its
sex. But the plain flat cap, set decisively on
one side, and the man's light overcoat over
the straight slender figure, a student's or an
artist's, ended, one soon noted, in a blue skirt
and little feminine feet. It was, too, one
swiftly realised, a girl's face that fitted the
figure so frankly simple in its originality, a
grave sweet face, refined and intellectual,
unassuming, almost shrinking, yet with the
notable piquancy of a pronoimced black down
on the upper lip against the firmly toned matt
background of the complexion. One thought
of some Veronese or Paduan youth on the
Shakespearian stage whose sister found it so
easy to put on and off her brother's shape. A
shy yet daring figure it was that passed me in
that flash of vision, seeking to express itself,
yet sad with the incompletion of its own
bisexual mystery.
August 2. — To-day, when war seems to be
breaking out all over Europe, I take up the
poems of Leon Deubel, that fine poet who



LEON DEUBEL 45

ended his life in despair at the age of thirty-
five last year, and read the Preface by his
friend Louis Pergaud.
