(or in other words to whom _her_ vision of Bob and nothing else) would
mean so delightfully much? It was on the same general lines that poor
Newton Winch, bereft, alone, ill, perhaps dying, and with the drawback
of a not very sympathetic personality--as Mark remembered it at
least--to contend against in almost any conceivable appeal to human
furtherance, it was on these lines, very much, that the luckless case in
Fiftieth Street was offered him as a source of salutary discipline. The
moment for such a lesson might strike him as strange, in view of the
quite special and independent opportunity for exercise that his spirit
had during the last three days enjoyed there in his hotel bedroom; but
evidently his languor of charity needed some admonition finer than
any it might trust to chance for, and by the time he at last, Winch's
residence recognised, was duly elevated to his level and had pressed
the electric button at his door, he felt himself acting indeed as under
stimulus of a sharp poke in the side.

V

Within the apartment to which he had been admitted, moreover, the fine
intelligence we have imputed to him was in the course of three minutes
confirmed; since it took him no longer than that to say to himself,
facing his old acquaintance, that he had never seen any one so improved.
The place, which had the semblance of a high studio light as well as a
general air of other profusions and amplitudes, might have put him off
a little by its several rather glaringly false accents, those of
contemporary domestic "art" striking a little wild. The scene was
smaller, but the rich confused complexion of the Pocahontas, showing
through Du Barry paint and patches, might have set the example--which
had been followed with the costliest candour--so that, clearly, Winch
was in these days rich, as most people in New York seemed rich; as, in
spite of Bob's depredations, Florence Ash was, as even Mrs. Folliott was
in spite of Phil Bloodgood's, as even Phil Bloodgood himself must have
been for reasons too obvious; as in fine every one had a secret for
being, or for feeling, or for looking, every one at least but Mark
Monteith.

These facts were as nothing, however, in presence of his quick and
strong impression that his pale, nervous, smiling, clean-shaven host
had undergone since their last meeting some extraordinary process of
refinement. He had been ill, unmistakably, and the effects of a plunge
into plain clean living, where a