All he wished of his tailor was, to provide
that sober mean of color and cut which would never detain the eye for
a moment. He went to Vienna, to Smyrna, to London. In all the variety
of costumes, a carnival, a kaleidoscope of clothes, to his horror he
could never discover a man in the street who wore anything like his
own dress. He would have given his soul for the ring of Gyges. His
dismay at his visibility had blunted the fears of mortality. "Do you
think," he said, "I am in such great terror of being shot,--I, who am
only waiting to shuffle off my corporeal jacket, to slip away into the
back stars, and put diameters of the solar system and sidereal orbits
between me and all souls,--there to wear out ages in solitude, and
forget memory itself, if it be possible?" He had a remorse running to
despair of his social _gaucheries_, and walked miles and miles to
get the twitchings out of his face, the starts and shrugs out of his
arms and shoulders. "God may forgive sins," he said, "but awkwardness
has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.
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