as?"

"Yes, an intellectual, but not a moral."

"Ah it's everything! And I'm a good girl too--won't that do?"

"It remains to be seen," Sherringham laughed. "A creature who's
absolutely _all_ an artist--I'm curious to see that."

"Surely it has been seen--in lots of painters, lots of musicians."

"Yes, but those arts are not personal like yours. I mean not so much so.
There's something left for--what shall I call it?--for character."

She stared again with her tragic light. "And do you think I haven't a
character?" As he hesitated she pushed back her chair, rising rapidly.

He looked up at her an instant--she seemed so "plastic"; and then rising
too answered: "Delightful being, you've a hundred!"

XII

The summer arrived and the dense air of the Paris theatres became in
fact a still more complicated mixture; yet the occasions were not few on
which Sherringham, having placed a box near the stage (most often a
stuffy, dusky _baignoire_) at the disposal of Mrs. Rooth and her
daughter, found time just to look in, as he said, to spend a part of the
evening with them and point the moral of the performance. The pieces,
the successes of the winter, had entered the automatic phase: they went
on by the force of the impetus acquired, deriving little fresh life from
the interpretation, and in ordinary conditions their strong points, as
rendered by the actors, would have been as wearisome to this student as
an importunate repetition of a good story. But it was not long before he
became aware that the conditions couldn't be taken for ordinary. There
was a new infusion in his consciousness--an element in his life which
altered the relations of things. He was not easy till he had found the
right name for it--a name the more satisfactory that it was simple,
comprehensive, and plausible. A new "distraction," in the French sense,
was what he flattered himself he had discovered; he could recognise that
as freely as possible without being obliged to classify the agreeable
resource as a new entanglement. He was neither too much nor too little
diverted; he had all his usual attention to give to his work: he had
only an employment for his odd hours which, without being imperative,
had over various others the advantage of a certain continuity.

And yet, I hasten to add, he was not so well pleased with it but that
among his friends he maintained for the present a rich reserve about it.
He had no irresistible impulse to describe