vista, which
harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling it by a
long brightness, with great divans and old chairs that figured hours of
rest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving those who came
into it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with her new
acquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous,
were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently said: "I'm so glad
to have a chance to thank you."

"To thank me--?" He had to wonder.

"I liked your book so much. I think it splendid."

She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book she
meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar
detail, and he wasn't even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she told
him--her handsome bright face told him--he had given her. The feeling
she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something
larger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of
his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied,
the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real
success was to resemble _that_, to live, to bloom, to present the
perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with
a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested on
him--there was a wideish space between these, and the division of her
rich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free
arch above them--he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which
it was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious he should
have liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face
were those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexion
and in the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural--that was
indubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on
account of her aesthetic toggery, which was conventionally
unconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuous
spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his
fears had been justified; for, though he was an artist to the essence,
the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in
her folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him
shrink not as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a man
potentially himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really m