alas and alas--as he truly
said--it's hardly a question of actuality."

And he lit a cigarette.

XX

"So he did meet her, after all?" the Duchessa said.

"Yes, he met her in the end," Peter answered.

They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright
perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose,
where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and
still and beautiful--a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The
Duchessa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low,
lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he
must be cautious, cautious.

"Yes, he met her in the end," he said.

"Well--? And then--?" she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling
into his eyes. "What happened? Did she come up to his expectations?
Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining--oh, but
pining--to hear the continuation of the story."

She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. "I must be cautious,"
he told himself. "In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment." At
the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely
nonchalant and candid.

"Oh, no--tutt' altro," he said, with an assumption of nonchalant
airiness and candid promptness. "She 'better bettered' his
expectations--she surpassed his fondest. She was a thousand times more
delightful than he had dreamed--though, as you know, he had dreamed a
good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest
echo of her."

The Duchessa meditated for an instant.

"It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a
disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion," she said, at last.

"It seems so, indeed," assented Peter; "but disenchantment, there was
none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the
substance--he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were,
from a single angle, and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale
reflection of one side of her--a pencil-sketch in profile."

The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.

"You pile wonder upon wonder," she said. "That the reality should excel
the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid
from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more
splendid still, on close inspection! It's dead against the accepted
theory of things. And that any woman should be