as struck with her critical
intelligence and with something large and bold in the movement in her
mind. She said things that startled him and that evidently had come to
her directly; they weren't picked-up phrases--she placed them too well.
St. George had been right about her being first-rate, about her not being
afraid to gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenly
something came back to her, and she said: "I recollect that he did speak
of Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, apropos of something or other,
that she didn't care for perfection."

"That's a great crime in an artist's wife," Paul returned.

"Yes, poor thing!" and the girl sighed with a suggestion of many
reflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently added: "Ah
perfection, perfection--how one ought to go in for it! I wish _I_
could."

"Every one can in his way," her companion opined.

"In _his_ way, yes--but not in hers. Women are so hampered--so
condemned! Yet it's a kind of dishonour if you don't, when you want to
_do_ something, isn't it?" Miss Fancourt pursued, dropping one train in
her quickness to take up another, an accident that was common with her.
So these two young persons sat discussing high themes in their eclectic
drawing-room, in their London "season"--discussing, with extreme
seriousness, the high theme of perfection. It must be said in
extenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in the
business. Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty; they weren't
posturing for each other or for some one else.

The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducing it; the
perfection to which for the moment they agreed to confine their
speculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work of art. Our young
woman's imagination, it appeared, had wandered far in that direction, and
her guest had the rare delight of feeling in their conversation a full
interchange. This episode will have lived for years in his memory and
even in his wonder; it had the quality that fortune distils in a single
drop at a time--the quality that lubricates many ensuing frictions. He
still, whenever he likes, has a vision of the room, the bright red
sociable talkative room with the curtains that, by a stroke of successful
audacity, had the note of vivid blue. He remembers where certain things
stood, the particular book open on the table and the almost intense odour
of the flowers placed, at the left, somewhere behind