"I liked your book so much. I think it splendid."She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book she meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgar detail, and he wasn't even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she told him - her handsome bright face told him - he had given her. The feeling she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was something larger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble THAT, to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested on him - there was a wideish space between these, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them - he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which it was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious he should have liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face were those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexion and in the sweetness of her mouth.
Above all she was natural - that was indubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on account of her aesthetic toggery, which was conventionally unconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuous spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his fears had been justified;for, though he was an artist to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a man potentially himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really more candid than her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing her liberal character suited by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since if she was draped as a pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of life. He thanked her for her appreciation - aware at the same time that he didn't appear to thank her enough and that she might think him ungracious. He was afraid she would ask him to explain something he had written, and he always winced at that - perhaps too timidly - for to his own ear the explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he liked her so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run he should be able to show her he wasn't rudely evasive. Moreover she surely wasn't quick to take offence, wasn't irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he said to her, "Ah don't talk of anything I've done, don't talk of it HERE;there's another man in the house who's the actuality!" - when he uttered this short sincere protest it was with the sense that she would see in the words neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful man bored with praise.
"You mean Mr. St. George - isn't he delightful?"Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would have half-broken his heart if he hadn't been so young. "Alas Idon't know him. I only admire him at a distance.""Oh you must know him - he wants so to talk to you," returned Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by her quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how she would always calculate on everything's being simple between others.
"I shouldn't have supposed he knew anything about me," he professed.
"He does then - everything. And if he didn't I should be able to tell him.""To tell him everything?" our friend smiled.
"You talk just like the people in your book!" she answered.
"Then they must all talk alike."
She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. "Well, it must be so difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it IS - terribly. I've tried too - and I find it so. I've tried to write a novel.""Mr. St. George oughtn't to discourage you," Paul went so far as to say.
"You do much more - when you wear that expression.""Well, after all, why try to be an artist?" the young man pursued.
"It's so poor - so poor!"
"I don't know what you mean," said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave.
"I mean as compared with being a person of action - as living your works.""But what's art but an intense life - if it be real?" she asked.
"I think it's the only one - everything else is so clumsy!" Her companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her. "It's so interesting to meet so many celebrated people.""So I should think - but surely it isn't new to you.""Why I've never seen any one - any one: living always in Asia."The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. "But doesn't that continent swarm with great figures? Haven't you administered provinces in India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to your car?"It was as if she didn't care even SHOULD he amuse himself at her cost. "I was with my father, after I left school to go out there.
It was delightful being with him - we're alone together in the world, he and I - but there was none of the society I like best.
One never heard of a picture - never of a book, except bad ones.""Never of a picture? Why, wasn't all life a picture?"She looked over the delightful place where they sat. "Nothing to compare to this. I adore England!" she cried.
It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. "Ah of course I don't deny that we must do something with her, poor old dear, yet.""She hasn't been touched, really," said the girl.
"Did Mr. St. George say that?"
