a situation?" she asked. "How could he sit
still under it? Did n't he try in any way--did n't he make any effort at
all--to--to find her out--to discover who she was--to get introduced to
her? I should think he could never have rested--I should think he would
have moved heaven and earth."

"What could he do? Tell me a single thing he could have done," said
Peter. "Society has made no provision for a case like his. It 's
absurd--but there it is. You see a woman somewhere; you long to make
her acquaintance; and there's no natural bar to your doing so--you 're a
presentable man she's what they call a lady--you're both, more or less,
of the same monde. Yet there 's positively no way known by which you can
contrive it--unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just happens to drop
a common acquaintance between you, at the right time and place. Chance,
in Wildmay's case, happened to drop all the common acquaintances they
may possibly have had at a deplorable distance. He was alone on each
of the occasions when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to
introduce him; there was no one he could apply to for information
concerning her. He could n't very well follow her carriage through the
streets--dog her to her lair, like a detective. Well--what then?"

The Duchessa was playing with her fan again.

"No," she agreed; "I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems rather hard
on the poor man--rather baffling and tantalising."

"The poor man thought it so, to be sure," said Peter; "he fretted and
fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now,
anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her--then she would
vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end--he had to take it out in
something--he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a
mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it
into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long
delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical
intimacy. He had never heard her voice--but now he heard it as often as
Pauline opened her lips. He owned her--he possessed her--she lived under
his roof--she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to
you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw her, knew
her, felt her, realised her, in every detail of her mind, her soul, her
person--down to the very intonations of her speech--down to the veins
in her hands, the rings on her fingers--down to