o hold the marriage tie in rather superstitious reverence,
and was likely to entertain slightly superannuated views regarding the
obligation of reticence in the discussion of family matters. She feared
she had reckoned insufficiently with all this in her eagerness,
forgetting subtle diplomacies. Her approach had lacked tact and
_finesse_. In dealing with an adversary of coarser fibre her attack
would have succeeded to admiration. But this man was refined and
sensitive to a fault, easily disgusted, narrowly critical in questions
of taste.

Therefore she glanced up at him again, trying to divine his thought,
her own mind in a tumult of opposing purposes and desires. And just as
the contemplation of her beauty had so deeply stirred him earlier this
same afternoon, so did the contemplation of his beauty now stir her. It
satisfied her artistic sense. Save that the nose was straighter and
shorter, the young man reminded her notably of a certain antique,
terracotta head of the young Alexander which she had once seen in a
museum at Munich, and which had left an ineffaceable impression upon
her memory. But, the face of the young Alexander beside her was of
nobler moral quality than that other--undebauched by feasts and
licentious pleasures as yet, masculine yet temperate, the sanctuary of
generous ambitions--merciless it might be, she fancied, but never base,
never weak. Thus was her artistic sense satisfied, morally as well as
physically. Her social sense was satisfied also. For the young man's
high-breeding could not be called in question. He held himself
remarkably well. She approved the cut of his clothes moreover, his sure
and easy handling of the spirited horses.

And then her eyes, following down the lines of the fur rug, received
renewed assurance of the fact of his deformity--hidden as far as might
be, with decent pride, yet there, permanent and unalterable. This
worked upon her strongly. For, to her peculiar temperament, the
indissoluble union in one body of elements so noble and so monstrous,
of youthful vigour and abject helplessness, the grotesque in short,
supplied the last word of sensuous and dramatic attraction. As last
evening, in the Long Gallery, so now, she hugged herself, at once
frightened and fascinated, wrought upon by excitement as in the
presence of something akin to the supernatural, and altogether beyond
the confines of ordinary experience.

And to think that she had come so near holding this inim