ady serenity of his gray eyes; the ease and suppleness
and indolent strength of his tall thin figure--all these physical
details expressed the reserves and inhibitions of generations. The only
flaw that she could detect was that dryness of soul that she had noticed
before, as of soil that has been too heavily drained. She knew that he
excelled in all the virtues that are monumental and public, that he was
an honourable opponent, a scrupulous defender of established rules and
precedents. He would always reach the goal, but his race would never
carry him beyond the end of the course; he would always fulfil the law,
but he would never give more than the exact measure; he would always
fight for the risen Christ, but he would never have followed the humble
bearer of the Cross. His strength and weakness were the kind which had
profoundly influenced her life. He represented in her world the
conservative principle, the accepted standard, the acknowledged
authority, custom, stability, reason, and moderation.

As he sat down in front of the fire, he looked at her with a gentle
possessive gaze.

"Of course you have never sold a print," he remarked in a laughing tone,
and she responded as flippantly.

"Of course!"

"Why didn't you call it a collection?"

"Because people wouldn't come."

"Then why didn't you keep them at home where you have so much that is
fine?"

She laughed. "Because people couldn't come. I mean the people I don't
know. I have a fancy for the people I have never met."

"On the principle that the unknown is the desirable."

She nodded. "And that the desirable is the unattainable."

His gray eyes were warmed by a fugitive glow. "I shouldn't have put it
that way in your case. You appear to have everything."

"Do I? Well, that twists the sentence backward. Shall we say that the
attainable is the undesirable?"

"Surely not. Can you have ceased already to desire these lovely things?
Could that piece of tapestry lose its charm for you, or that Spanish
desk, or those English prints, or the old morocco of that binding? Do
you feel that the colours in that brocade at your back could ever become
meaningless?"

"I am not sure. Wouldn't it be possible to look at it while you were
seeing something else, something so drab that it would take the colour
out of all beauty?" She was looking at him over the tea-table, and while
she asked the question she raised a lump of sugar in the quaint old
sugar tongs she had br