Fanny continued to smile at the novelist. Keegan bored her. They had been walking together and she had lost interest in the sensual game she had been playing with him. Alone, she might have tried to repeat the experience of the morning with Keegan. But her physical curiosity partially gratified for the moment by the surreptitious excitement she had derived from him, her interest transferred itself to Aubrey. The man amused and impressed her. Her thought separated him into two people. She resented his persistent dignity. Her perceptions, sharpened by the practical sensuality of her nature, saw through the little ruses by which Aubrey converted his slight deformities into a dignified whole. As she listened to him she said to herself, "... he thinks it's smart to wear a ribbon on his glasses ... he sticks his chest out ... he's got skinny arms ... he looks funny...." After a half hour she lost her resentment and the thing that had inspired it came to amuse her. She could see through his funny manner so it didn't anger her. But although now she smiled with amusement at the man's impressiveness, a feeling of awe penetrated her. Aubrey was a great man. People spoke his name everywhere. He was known. A delicious tremble passed through her. She was careful not to translate it into words. Had she inspected the tremble and its causes, it would have outraged her. She was content always to accept her emotions blindly for fear of having to forego them if she knew their causes. She kept herself intact in her own mind as a good girl not by belligerently repressing her impulses but by enjoying them secretly outside her mind. She had thought of Aubrey as a great man and with it had come the inner impulse to be embraced passionately by him. Not because he was Aubrey, but because he was the famous Aubrey Gilchrist, whose name was known. To be embraced by a famous man would be like being embraced somehow by all the people who knew his name. She would be able to think while satisfying her desire, "Everybody knows him. They know all about him. It's almost as if they knew he was doing this ... I was doing this."