iting as a sudden gallop--he might have been astride, in a boundless
field, of a runaway horse.

She was in her way so fine that he could only think how to "do" her:
that hard calculation soon flattened out the consciousness, lively in
him at first, that she was a beautiful woman who had sought him out of
his retirement. At the end of their first sitting her having done so
appeared the most natural thing in the world: he had a perfect right to
entertain her there--explanations and complications were engulfed in the
productive mood. The business of "knocking her in" held up a lamp to her
beauty, showed him how much there was of it and that she was infinitely
interesting. He didn't want to fall in love with her--that _would_ be a
sell, he said to himself--and she promptly became much too interesting
for it. Nick might have reflected, for simplification's sake, as his
cousin Peter had done, but with more validity, that he was engaged with
Miss Rooth in an undertaking which didn't in the least refer to
themselves, that they were working together seriously and that decent
work quite gainsaid sensibility--the humbugging sorts alone had to help
themselves out with it. But after her first sitting--she came, poor
girl, but twice--the need of such exorcisms passed from his spirit: he
had so thoroughly, so practically taken her up. As to whether his
visitor had the same bright and still sense of co-operation to a
definite end, the sense of the distinctively technical nature of the
answer to every question to which the occasion might give birth, that
mystery would be lighted only were it open to us to regard this young
lady through some other medium than the mind of her friends. We have
chosen, as it happens, for some of the great advantages it carries with
it, the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us--what Nick of
course wondered about before he ceased to care, as indeed he intimated
to her--why a budding celebrity should have dreamed of there being
something for her in so blighted a spot. She should have gone to one of
the regular people, the great people: they would have welcomed her with
open arms. When Nick asked her if some of the R.A.'s hadn't expressed a
wish for a crack at her she replied: "Oh dear no, only the tiresome
photographers; and fancy _them_ in the future. If mamma could only do
_that_ for me!" And she added with the charming fellowship for which she
was conspicuous at these hours: "You know I don't thi