THOMAS WALES WARREN
upper one, almost to the palate. And that was a malformation of the mouth which he had unwittingly forced upon himself in the struggles of his ambitious boyhood, when he had lived with his jaws clenched—literally—dramatizing to himself his wrestle with adversity, consciously assuming a pose of determination to succeed, and biting his jaws together as if he were fighting physically while he studied; or when he was threshing around his unheated room at night trying to get warm before he went to bed; or, in later years, when he was facing any opposition to his advancement. It was not a weakness in his mouth; it was rather a pathetic sort of strength. It showed, now, chiefly when he confronted any serious problem of policy that had to be grappled with in the secrecy of his private sessions with himself.
He was already growing bald, but he wore a toupee. This toupee he had taken off because he was hot, and it lay on his desk blotter before him, like the scalp of an enemy. He was apparently studying it, crouched forward on the arms of his desk chair, with his hands clasped in a loose entanglement of his long fingers. And his tight little skull shone with the gloss of a coffee-colored ostrich-egg in the warm gloom of his old-fashioned library.
The windows were covered with Venetian blinds that showed between their slats the green glow of locust-trees and sunlight outside on his lawn.
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