More inaction followed on Tarr’s part. She sometimes thought he enjoyed these ceremonies. Through girlhood her strong senses had churned away at her, and claimed an image from her gentle and dreamy mind. In its turn the mind had accumulated its impressions of men, fancies from books and conversations, and made its hive. So her senses were presented with the image that was to satisfy and rule them. They flung themselves upon it as she had flung herself upon Tarr. This image left considerable latitude. Tarr had been the first to fit—rather paradoxically, but all the faster for that. This “high standard Aryan female,” as Tarr described her, had arrived, with him, at the full and headlong condition we agree to name “love.” The image, or type, was thrown away. The individual took its place. Bertha had had several sweethearts before Tarr. They had all left the type-image intact. At most it had been a little blurred by them. It had almost been smashed for one man, physically resembling Tarr. But he had never got quite near enough to do that. Tarr had characteristically supposed this image to have little sharpness of outline left. He thought it would not be a very difficult matter for any one to extort its recognitions. “Vous êtes à mon goût, Sorbet. Du bist mein gesmack,” she would say. Tarr was not demonstrative when she said this. He could not reciprocate. And he could not help reflecting whether to be “her taste” was very flattering. There _must_ be something the matter with him. All her hope centred in his laziness. She watched his weaknesses with a loving eye. He had much to say about his under-nature. She listened attentively. “It is the most dangerous quality of all to possess,” and he would sententiously add—“only the best people possess it, in common with the obscure and humble. It is like a great caravanserai in which scores of people congregate. It is a disguise in which such a one, otherwise Pasha, circulates among unembarrassed men. He brings away stores of wisdom, with much diversion by the way.” He saw, however, the danger of these facilities. The Pasha had been given a magic mask of humbleness. But the inner nature seemed flowing equally to the mask and the unmasked magnificence. He was as yet unformed, but wished to form wholly Pasha. This under-nature’s chief use was as a precious _villégiature_ for his energy. Bertha was the country wench the more exalted incarnation had met while on its holidays, or, wandering idle Khalife, in some concourse of his surreptitious life. * * * * *