Kennedy had often
been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an
incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in
sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high,
white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and sensuous
mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness
in his nature.
Of a very different type was his companion, Julius Burger. He came of a
curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust
qualities of the North mingling strangely with the softer graces of the
South. Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above
them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow
curls lying round it. His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his
companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman
busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.
Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian
subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one
understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no
actual bearing upon his character.
In age and in reputation he was on the same level as his English
companion, but his life and his work had both been far more arduous.
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