ragement, her praise. Sometimes in their talks he would put the
portrait aside, and fall to sketching for her--either to illustrate
his memories of pictures, or things noticed in French life and
landscapes. And as the charcoal worked; as he forgot himself in
hurried speech, and those remarks fell from him which are the natural
outcome of a painter's experience, vivacious also and touched with
literature; then her brown eyes would lighten and soften, and for
once his mind would feel exultant that it moved with hers on equal
terms--nay, that he was teacher and she taught. Whenever there emerged
in him the signs of that demonic something that makes greatness
she would be receptive, eager, humble even. But again his commoner,
coarser side, his mere lack of breeding, would reappear; and she would
fall back on her cold or gentle defensiveness. Thus protected by what
his wrath called 'airs,' she was a mystery to him, yet a mystery that
tamed and curbed him. He had never dreamt that such women existed.
His own views of women were those of the shopkeeping middle class,
practical, selfish, or sensual. But he had been a reader of books; and
through Madame de Pastourelles certain sublimities or delicacies of
poetry began to seem to him either less fantastic or more real.

All the same:--he was not sure that he liked her, and while one hour
he was all restlessness to resume his task, the next it was a relief
to be temporarily quit of it. As for Lord Findon, except for a certain
teasing vagueness on the business side of things, he had shown himself
a good friend. Several times since the first variegated evening had
Fenwick dined with them, mostly _en famille_. Lady Findon, indeed, had
been away, nursing an invalid father; Madame de Pastourelles
filled her place. The old fellow would talk freely--politics,
connoisseurship, art. Fenwick too was allowed his head, and said
his say; though always surrounded and sometimes chafing under
that discipline of good society which is its only or its best
justification. It flattered his vanity enormously, however, to be thus
within touch of the inner circle in politics and art; for the Findons
had relations and friends in all the foremost groups of both; and
incidentally Fenwick, who had the grudges and some of the dreams of
the democrat, was beginning to have a glimpse of the hidden springs
and powers of English society--to his no small bewilderment often!

Great luck--he admitted--all this--for