er motions, there was a regal quality;
yet, too, something of isolation, of withdrawal, in her self-possession
and unruffled observation. She seemed, to Detricand, a figure apart,
a woman whose friendship would be everlasting, but whose love would be
more an affectionate habit than a passion; and in whom devotion would be
strong because devotion was the key-note of her nature. The dress of a
nun would have turned her into a saint; of a peasant would have made her
a Madonna; of a Quaker, would have made her a dreamer and a devote; of a
queen, would have made her benign yet unapproachable. It struck him
all at once as he looked, that this woman had one quality in absolute
kinship with Guida Landresse--honesty of mind and nature; only with
this young aristocrat the honesty would be without passion. She had
straight-forwardness, a firm if limited intellect, a clear-mindedness
belonging somewhat to narrowness of outlook, but a genuine capacity for
understanding the right and the wrong of things. Guida, so Detricand
thought, might break her heart and live on; this woman would break her
heart and die: the one would grow larger through suffering, the other
shrink to a numb coldness.

So he entertained himself by these flashes of discernment, presently
merged in wonderment as to what was in Philip's mind as he stood there,
destiny hanging in that drop of ink at the point of the pen in the
Duke's fingers!

Philip was thinking of the destiny, but more than all else just now he
was thinking of the woman before him and the issue to be faced by him
regarding her. His thoughts were not so clear nor so discerning as
Detricand's. No more than he understood Guida did he understand
this clear-eyed, still, self-possessed woman. He thought her cold,
unsympathetic, barren of that glow which should set the pulses of a man
like himself bounding. It never occurred to him that these still waters
ran deep, that to awaken this seemingly glacial nature, to kindle a fire
on this altar, would be to secure unto his life's end a steady, enduring
flame of devotion. He revolted from her; not alone because he had a
wife, but because the Comtesse chilled him, because with her, in any
case, he should never be able to play the passionate lover as he had
done with Guida; and with Philip not to be the passionate lover was to
be no lover at all. One thing only appealed to him: she was the Comtesse
Chantavoine, a fitting consort in the eyes of the world for a s