He was beginning to adjust his latest impressions to his earlier idea of her. He recalled the evening when he had first seen her--the hot, crowded drawing-room, the heavy atmosphere, the dull faces coming and going, and the figure of Audrey flashing through it all. She had irritated him then, for he had not yet classified her. He had tried not to think of her. She dogged his thoughts with most unmaidenly insistence; her image lay in wait for him at every cross-road of association; it was something vivid yet elusive, protean yet persistent. He recalled that other evening of her dinner-party--their first recognised meeting. Her whole person, which at first sight had impressed him with its emphatic individuality, now struck him as characterless and conventional. And yet--what was she like? She was like a chameleon. No, she wasn't; he recollected that the change of colour was a vital process in that animal. She was like an opal--all sparkle when you move it, and at rest dull, most undeniably dull. No, _that_ wasn't it exactly. She was a looking-glass for other people's personalities (he hated the horrid word, and apologised to himself for using it), formless and colourless, reflecting form and colour. After a moment's satisfaction with this last fancy, he became aware that he was being made the fool of metaphor. That was not his way. To find out what lay at the bottom of this shifting personality, what elemental thoughts and feelings, if any, the real Audrey was composed of; to see for himself the play of circumstances on her plastic nature, and know what reaction it was capable of--in a word, to experimentalise in cold blood on the living nerve and brain tissue, was his plan of work for the year 1896. Making a mental note of several of the above phrases for future use, Wyndham knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went to bed, where he dreamed that the Devil, in evening dress, was presenting him with Audrey's soul--done up in a brown wrapper marked "MS. only"--for dissection. CHAPTER XI