Matilda read some of them. She gulped them down at the rate of two in an evening, but when he tried to discuss them with her she had nothing to say about them. To her they were just stories, to be read and forgotten. He tried to persuade himself that she was right, at any rate more sensible than himself, but could get no further than the admission of the fact that she had no feeling for literature and would just as soon read a cash-made piece of hackwork as a masterpiece. That led him back to the subject of his essay and woman's indifference to ideas and idealism. He had been considering it as a general proposition, but he was forced to admit that it was in truth only Matilda's indifference to his own ideas, and he was not at all sure but she possessed something much more valuable, a power to assimilate ideas when they had taken flesh and become a part of the life that is lived. He knew that he was using her as a test, a touchstone, and through her he had learned to tolerate many things which his reason scouted. As a practical criterion for life and living (two very different things, as he was beginning dimly to perceive)--she was very valuable to him, but it was when he passed on to the things of art and found himself faced with the need of getting or begetting clear conceptions of phenomena, in his search for the underlying, connecting and resolving truth, that she failed him. She said he thought too much. Perhaps he did, but it was a part of his way of living, and he could not rest content with his relation with her, except he had also his idea of her. It was a relief to him, and he felt he was greatly advanced along the road by which he was traveling when he found her in the National Gallery among the five singing women of the _Nativity_ of Piero della Francesca. That discovery gave her an existence in the world of art. He told her about the picture and took her to see it. "Good Lord!" she said. "Is that what you think I'm like?"