In his mind he is at the bottom of a well, within a funnel of wind and air. He is withstanding an onslaught, buffeted by a formless influence—neither a being nor disembodied reflex—a pressure of something that has the texture of infinite crystalline facets. No breeze touches his skin, yet the tiny blond hairs along his arms covered with shirtsleeves are raised, bristling at the invisible something, or nothing, bristling in futility. The Duke is young and pleasing in a primeval way; he evokes an instinctive attraction. He is replete with proportional flow of line and surface, one giving way to the other in a perpetual continuation, with smooth plateaus of skin covering a delicate facial bone structure, with curving wisps of gilded wheat hair combed back in a queue, or sometimes lying loose and wanton about his shoulders. Wanton is not something of which he is aware and yet it is a property of his self, together with smooth and silken and virile and decadent. The castle is scattered in crumbling pieces of relic and ruin on all sides of him.
