whom to watch was to
admire, even against the greatest of them all. Alas! mere admiration
could not change my task or stay my hand; it could but clog me by
destroying my singleness of purpose, and giving me a double heart to
match my double face.

Since, however, a detestable duty had been undertaken, and since as a
duty it was more apparent than I had dreamt of finding it, there was
nothing for it but to go through with the thing and make immediate
enemies of my friends. So I set my teeth and talked of Bob. I was glad
Mrs. Lascelles liked him. His father was a remote connection of mine,
whom I had never met. But I had once known his mother very well.

"And what is she like?" asked Mrs. Lascelles, calling her fine eyes home
from infinity, and fixing them once more on me.

CHAPTER VI

OUT OF ACTION

Now if, upon a warm, soft, summer evening, you were suddenly asked to
describe the perfect winter's day, either you would have to stop and
think a little, or your imagination is more elastic than mine. Yet you
might have a passionate preference for cold sun and bracing airs. To me,
Catherine Evers and this Mrs. Lascelles were as opposite to each other
as winter and summer, or the poles, or any other notorious antitheses.
There was no comparison between them in my mind, yet as I sat with one
among the sunlit, unfamiliar Alps, it was a distinct effort to picture
the other in the little London room I knew so well. For it was always
among her books and pictures that I thought of Catherine, and to think
was to wish myself there at her side, rather than to wish her here at
mine. Catherine's appeal, I used to think, was to the highest and the
best in me, to brain and soul, and young ambition, and withal to one's
love of wit and sense of humour. Mrs. Lascelles, on the other hand,
struck me primarily in the light of some splendid and spirited animal. I
still liked to dwell upon her dancing. She satisfied the mere eye more
and more. But I had no reason to suppose that she knew right from wrong
in art or literature, any more than she would seem to have distinguished
between them in life itself. Her Tauchnitz novel lay beside her on the
grass and I again reflected that it would not have found a place on
Catherine's loftiest shelf. Catherine would have raved about the view
and made delicious fun of Quinby and the judge, and we should have sat
together talking poetry and harmless scandal by the happy hour. Mrs.
Lascelles pro