Her friend Bill Chevenix gave her no warnings. Even when she sounded for them, he gave none. “I like Alexis,” he said once. “He's not so original as he makes out, but there's enough to give him a relish. A handy chap, too, in a dozen ways--he'll model you in wax, or draw you in pastels, or sing about you on the guitar, or whistle you off on the piano; but he's not strong, isn't Alexis. The one thing he can do--no, there are two. He can ride anything, and he can use a revolver. I saw him empty the ten of hearts once: very pretty. I dare say, if he was put to it, he could use an iron to some purpose; but we don't stick each other here, so he'd be out of practice. I rather wish we did, you know. It's far more gentlemanly than laying for a chap outside his club with a hunting-crop, and getting summoned for assault at Vine Street. Not a bit more vicious, barring the Ten Commandments.” “Prince Morosine doesn't believe in them,” Sanchia said. “He's vowed to abolish them.” “So he may tell you, my dear. Don't you believe it. So long as they are good form they will be Alexis' form. He'd sooner die than covet his neighbour's wife.” She reserved this for consideration. Meantime, she saw more of Morosine than of any other man, and got through January very well by his help. She particularly liked his company in galleries, because, though he never allowed himself raptures--of which she, too, was incapable--he was always seeking the roots of rapture. Sanchia had a fund of enthusiasm for art all the richer, perhaps, for being denied expression. It was comfortable to have that securely based. “Do you ever consider,” he asked her once, when they stood before the great group of the Pediment, “why it is that these things are so beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for life to us in art, they are more than life? It's because they point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of it--ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly static--idle, you might say (only they wouldn't understand you), indulging their strength--are strong and able precisely because they have submitted themselves---” “Unlike the Poles?” She reminded him of their first conversation, and saw that he remembered it. He bowed to her. “Let me finish. These existences, emanations, essences, what you will, are submiss, not to man, but to Nature. They are as passive as Earth herself, and as immune. They derive their strength from her. That's our only reasonable service.” Whether he intended it or not, the effect of this kind of talk was to make her view submission to the world's voice as a reasonable service.