spirited, high-bred--a
woman of the world, familiar with literature and arts, and speaking at
least one language besides her mother-tongue. In dress she should be
exquisite, in conversation tactful, in manner sympathetic. As mistress
of the house she should be thorough; as a hostess, full of charm; as a
mother--but his imagination hardly went into that. That she should be a
perfect mother he took for granted, just as he took it for granted that
she should be beautiful. A woman who had the qualifications he desired
could not be less than beautiful from the sheer operation of the soul.

Considering how definite his ideas were--and moderate, on the whole--it
surprised him to find no one to embody them. It sometimes seemed to him
that the traditional race of Englishwomen had become extinct. Those he
met were either brilliant and hard, or handsome and horsey, or athletic
and weedy, or smart and selfish, or pretty and silly, or sweet and
provincial, or good and grotesque. With the best will in the world to
fall in love, he found little or no temptation. Indeed, he had begun to
think that the type of woman on whom he had set his heart was, like some
article of an antiquated fashion, no longer produced when unexpectedly
he saw her.

He saw her unexpectedly, because it was at church; and whatever his
motives on that bright Sunday morning in May in attending the old
garrison chapel in Southsea, the hope of seeing his vision realized was
not one. If, apart from the reasons for which people are supposed to go
to church, he had any special thought, it was that of meeting Mrs. Fane.
It had happened two or three times already that, having perceived her at
the service, he had joined her on the Common afterward, and she had
asked him home to lunch. They had been pleasant little luncheons--so
pleasant that he almost regretted the fact that she was an American. He
had nothing against Americans in themselves. He knew a number of their
women who had married into one arm or another of the Service with
conspicuous advantage to their husbands. That, in fact, was part of the
trouble. There were so many of them nowadays that he had begun to feel
vaguely that where there was question of high position--and he hoped
modestly that in his case there was distinctly question of that--it was
time the principle was being established of England for the English.
Nevertheless, he had got so far in his consideration of Drusilla Fane as
to ask himself wheth