er evident desire to leave him there, and her half frightened
refusal of his invitation to lunch, but he consoled himself by taking
his mid-day meal alone at _Prince's_, where several people pointed him
out to others, and he was aware that he was the object of a good deal
of respectful interest.

Later in the day, with several books under his arm, he rang the bell
at 17, Cadogan Street. He was committed now to the enterprise, which
had never been out of his thoughts since the night of the
conversazione.

Pauline kept him waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour. When at last
she entered, he found himself lost in admiration of the marvelous
simplicity of her muslin gown and her perfect figure. There was about
her some sort of exquisite perfection, a delicacy of outline and
detail almost cameolike, and impossible of reproduction.

She welcomed him kindly, but without any enthusiasm. He felt from the
first that he still had prejudices to conquer. He sat down by her side
and commenced his task. Very wisely, he eliminated altogether the
personal note from his talk. He showed her the books which he had
brought, and he talked of them fluently and well. She became more and
more interested. It was scarcely possible that she could refrain from
showing it, for he spoke of the things which he knew, and things which
the citizens of the world in every age have found fascinating. He
seemed to her to have gone a little further into the great mysterious
shadowland than anyone else--to have come a little nearer reading the
great riddle. She was a good listener, and she interrupted him only
once.

"But tell me this," she asked, towards the close of one of his
arguments. "This apprehension which you say one must cultivate, to be
able--how is it you put it?--to throw out feelers for the things which
our ordinary senses cannot grasp--isn't it a matter largely of
temperament?"

"One finds it difficult or easy to acquire," he answered, "according
to one's temperament. A nervous, magnetic person, who is not afraid of
solitude, of solitary thought, of taking the truth to his heart and
wrestling with it--that person is, of course, always nearer the truth
than the person of phlegmatic temperament, who has to struggle ever so
hard to be conscious of anything not actually within the sphere of his
physical apprehension. These things in our generation will have a
great effect. In centuries to come, they will become less and less
apparent. We mov