Yet he could not help being increasingly conscious of his power over her; it was so pathetically visible. Their conversations were often amusingly like those of kindly tutor and obedient, inquiring child; she hanging on his words in entire self-surrender, as he discoursed so graciously and brought his points so lightly and simply within the range of her comprehension. Sometimes, in following up an explanation, he would be carried away by the flow of his own ideas and his personal interest in the matter, and then he would almost seem to be addressing an equal in knowledge and experience. But whenever that happened; whenever, for example, he had let himself go too far into the subtle mysteries of technique, he would find himself regretting the unchecked surrender to impulse, and remain strangely vexed about it long afterwards. It was really soaring right outside her limitations! She was not a Lady Betty! Lady Betty was so often in his mind now: she seemed to have established herself more definitely there than ever before, as if to keep him up to the proper pitch in his judgments of women. He bowed his head low to Lady Betty, recognised her as his full intellectual equal--in some aspects his superior. She was brains and beauty. She was stateliness itself. She was sunshine and sweetness. What was Miss Robinson by the side of her? And as he asked himself the question, an impression of Miss Robinson, as he had recently come upon her suddenly in the streets, blotted out the more dignified version on his own canvas. How plain and homely she had seemed in her unobtrusive walking-costume; how insignificant her whole meek bearing! Yes, that was the true Miss Robinson; caught photographically in the act of being herself, and fixed by his vision for always--extinguishing the gorgeously-dressed person of these incessant festal evenings no less than his own artistic edition of her. In no respect could she claim to come up to his measure. He appreciated all her virtues, recognised her exceptional womanhood: by the side of Lady Betty she was insipid, _bourgeoise_, monotonously amiable. Yet he could never arrive at so harsh a verdict without relenting at a rebound. "It is curious," was his thought, "that in proportion as I get more friendly with her and really like her, I yet get harder and harder on her, poor child! She's a jolly good sort! What a decent world it would be if only there were ever so many more women like her!" And, by way of atonement, his manner at their next meeting would warm and soften sensibly; and it came upon him always with a degree of surprise that, however he might feel about Miss Robinson theoretically, her actual society was always pleasant and comrade-like. XI