es because she is going to
do a very important thing that is very ordinary."

"It doesn't seem at all ordinary to me."

Emile Artois began to stroke his beard. He was determined not to feel
jealous. He had never wished to marry Hermione, and did not wish to marry
her now, but he had come over from Paris secretly a man of wrath.

"You needn't tell me that," he said. "Of course it is the great event to
you. Otherwise you would never have thought of doing it."

"Exactly. Are you astonished?"

"I suppose I am. Yes, I am."

"I should have thought you were far too clever to be so."

"Exactly what I should have thought. But what living man is too clever to
be an idiot? I never met the gentleman and never hope to."

"You looked upon me as the eternal spinster?"

"I looked upon you as Hermione Lester, a great creature, an extraordinary
creature, free from the prejudices of your sex and from its pettinesses,
unconventional, big brained, generous hearted, free as the wind in a
world of monkey slaves, careless of all opinion save your own, but humbly
obedient to the truth that is in you, human as very few human beings are,
one who ought to have been an artist but who apparently preferred to be
simply a woman."

Hermione laughed, winking away two tears.

"Well, Emile dear, I'm being very simply a woman now, I assure you."

"And why should I be surprised? You're right. What is it makes me
surprised?"

He sat considering.

"Perhaps it is that you are so unusual, so individual, that my
imagination refuses to project the man on whom your choice could fall. I
project the snuffy professor--Impossible! I project the Greek god--again
my mind cries, 'Impossible!' Yet, behold, it is in very truth the Greek
god, the ideal of the ordinary woman."

"You know nothing about it. You're shooting arrows into the air."

"Tell me more then. Hold up a torch in the darkness."

"I can't. You pretend to know a woman, and you ask her coldly to explain
to you the attraction of the man she loves, to dissect it. I won't try
to."

"But," he said, with now a sort of joking persistence, which was only a
mask for an almost irritable curiosity, "I want to know."

"And you shall. Maurice and I are dining to-night at Caminiti's in
Peathill Street, just off Regent Street. Come and meet us there, and
we'll all three spend the evening together. Half-past eight, of course no
evening dress, and the most delicious Turkish coffee in London."

"Does