d episodes. At the same time, it seemed to her that she had
always lived this sort of life. Like the "souls" in Ted's ingenious
masterpiece, Audrey had suffered a metempsychosis, and her very memory
was changed. The change was not so much shown in the character of her
dress and her surroundings (Audrey was not the first woman who has tried
to be original by following the fashion); these things were only the
outward signs of an inward transformation. If her worship of the
beautiful was not natural, it was not altogether affected. She really
appreciated the things she saw, though she only saw them through as much
of Ted's mind as was transparent to her at the moment. It never occurred
to her to ask herself whether she would have chosen to stand quite so
often on the Embankment watching the sun go down behind Battersea
Bridge, or whether she would have sat quite so many hours in the
National Gallery looking at those white-faced grey-eyed Madonnas of
Botticelli that Ted was never tired of talking about. It was so natural
that he should be always with her when she did these things, that it was
impossible to disentangle her ideas and say what was her own and what
was his. She was not given to self-analysis.

But there were limits to Audrey's capacity for receiving impressions.
Between her and the world where Katherine always lived, and which Ted
visited at intervals now becoming rarer and rarer, there was a great
gulf fixed. After all, Audrey had no grasp of the impersonal; she could
only care for any object as it gave her certain emotions, raised certain
associations, or drew attention to herself. She was at home in the dim
borderland between art and nature, the region of vanity and vague
sensation. Here she could meet Ted half-way and talk to him about ideals
for the hour together. But in the realm of pure art, as he had told her
when she once said that she liked all his pictures because they were
his, personalities count for nothing; you must have an eye for the thing
itself, and the thing itself was the one thing that Audrey could not
see. In that world she was a pilgrim and a stranger; it was peopled with
shadowy fantastic rivals, who left her with no field and no favour;
flesh and blood were powerless to contend against them. They excited no
jealousy--they were too intangible for that; but in their half-seen
presence she had a sense of helpless irritation and bewilderment--it
baffled, overpowered, and humiliated her. To