valuation and was satisfied.

"They can't fail to understand each other on the very highest level of
idealistic perceptions. Can you imagine my John thrown away on some
enamoured white goose out of a stuffy old salon? Why, she couldn't even
begin to understand what he feels or what he needs."

"Yes," I said impenetrably, "he is not easy to understand."

"I have reason to think," she said with a suppressed smile, "that he has
a certain power over women. Of course I don't know anything about his
intimate life but a whisper or two have reached me, like that, floating
in the air, and I could hardly suppose that he would find an exceptional
resistance in that quarter of all others. But I should like to know the
exact degree."

I disregarded an annoying tendency to feel dizzy that came over me and
was very careful in managing my voice.

"May I ask, Madame, why you are telling me all this?"

"For two reasons," she condescended graciously. "First of all because
Mr. Mills told me that you were much more mature than one would expect.
In fact you look much younger than I was prepared for."

"Madame," I interrupted her, "I may have a certain capacity for action
and for responsibility, but as to the regions into which this very
unexpected conversation has taken me I am a great novice. They are
outside my interest. I have had no experience."

"Don't make yourself out so hopeless," she said in a spoilt-beauty tone.
"You have your intuitions. At any rate you have a pair of eyes. You are
everlastingly over there, so I understand. Surely you have seen how far
they are . . ."

I interrupted again and this time bitterly, but always in a tone of
polite enquiry:

"You think her facile, Madame?"

She looked offended. "I think her most fastidious. It is my son who is
in question here."

And I understood then that she looked on her son as irresistible. For my
part I was just beginning to think that it would be impossible for me to
wait for his return. I figured him to myself lying dressed on his bed
sleeping like a stone. But there was no denying that the mother was
holding me with an awful, tortured interest. Twice Therese had opened
the door, had put her small head in and drawn it back like a tortoise.
But for some time I had lost the sense of us two being quite alone in the
studio. I had perceived the familiar dummy in its corner but it lay now
on the floor as if Therese had knocked it down angrily with a broo