" he added, pleased with his application of her simile, "for a
Madame von Marwitz."

"Yes, I know," said Miss Woodruff, also, evidently, pleased. "That is
quite true; you all come out of your boxes for her. But, as a nation,
they are not artists, the English, are they? They are kind to the
beautiful things; they like to see them; they will take great trouble to
see them; but they do not make them. Beauty does not grow here--that is
what I mean. It is in its box, too, and it is taken out and passed round
from time to time. You do not mind my saying this? You, perhaps, are
yourself an artist?"

"Dear me, no; I'm only a lawyer. I'm shut up in the tightest of the
boxes," said Gregory.

Miss Woodruff scrutinized him with a smile. "I should not think that of
you," she said. "You do not look like an artist, it is true; few of us
can be artists; but you do not look shut into a box, either. Beauty, to
you, is something real; not a pastime, a fashion; no, I cannot think it.
When I saw your face last night I thought: Here is one who cares. One
counts those faces on one's fingers--even at a great concert. So many
think they care who only want to care. To you art is a serious thing and
an artist the greatest thing a country can produce. Is not that so?"

Gregory continued to be amused by what he felt to be Miss Woodruff's
_naivete_. He was inclined to think that artists, however admirable in
their functions, were undesirable in their persons, and the reverent
enthusiasm that Miss Woodruff imagined in him was singularly
uncharacteristic. He didn't quite know how to tell her so without
seeming rude, so he contented himself with confessing that beauty, in
his life, was kept, he feared, very much in its box.

They, went on talking, going to an adjacent sofa where Miss Woodruff,
while they talked, stroked the deep fur of an immense Persian cat,
Hieronimus by name, who established himself between them. Gregory found
her very easy to talk to, though they had so few themes in common, and
her face he discovered to be even more charming than he had thought it
the night before. She was not at all beautiful and he imagined that in
her world of artists she would not be particularly appreciated; nor
would she be appreciated in his own world of convention--a girl with
such a thick waist, such queer clothes, a face so broad, so brown, so
abruptly modelled. She was, he felt, a grave and responsible young
person, and something in her face sugges