him. These facts
were the fringe, as it were, of a fine special agitation which had its
birth in those two hours and of which perhaps the main sign was in its
leading him inwardly and repeatedly to breathe "I had no idea there was
any one like this--I had no idea there was any one like this!" Her
freedom amazed him and charmed him--it seemed so to simplify the
practical question. She was on the footing of an independent personage--a
motherless girl who had passed out of her teens and had a position and
responsibilities, who wasn't held down to the limitations of a little
miss. She came and went with no dragged duenna, she received people
alone, and, though she was totally without hardness, the question of
protection or patronage had no relevancy in regard to her. She gave such
an impression of the clear and the noble combined with the easy and the
natural that in spite of her eminent modern situation she suggested no
sort of sister-hood with the "fast" girl. Modern she was indeed, and
made Paul Overt, who loved old colour, the golden glaze of time, think
with some alarm of the muddled palette of the future. He couldn't get
used to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too good to be
real--it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into such a well of
sympathy. One might stray into the desert easily--that was on the cards
and that was the law of life; but it was too rare an accident to stumble
on a crystal well. Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment too
extravagant to be real they struck him at the next as too intelligent to
be false. They were both high and lame, and, whims for whims, he
preferred them to any he had met in a like relation. It was probable
enough she would leave them behind--exchange them for politics or
"smartness" or mere prolific maternity, as was the custom of scribbling
daubing educated flattered girls in an age of luxury and a society of
leisure. He noted that the water-colours on the walls of the room she
sat in had mainly the quality of being naives, and reflected that naivete
in art is like a zero in a number: its importance depends on the figure
it is united with. Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her.
Before he went away, at any rate, he said to her: "I thought St. George
was coming to see you to-day, but he doesn't turn up."

For a moment he supposed she was going to cry "Comment donc? Did you
come here only to meet him?" But the next he became aware