half-bravado

Updated: May 7, 2025

As Selwyn watched the two men standing with clasped hands over the table, he felt his heart-strings contract with pain. Although separated by more than thirty years, there was a cruel similarity in the pair in the half-bravado, half-timorous poise of the head; in the droop of sensuous lips; in the dark hair of each, matted over pallid foreheads.

Arthur Beverley Baxter - The Parts Men Play