“She gives no peace to herself or her friends. My mother’s exquisitely absurd. You understand that all these painters, poets, art collectors (and dealers in bric-à-brac, he interjected through his teeth) of my mother are not in my way; but Versoy lives more like a man of the world. One day I met him at the fencing school. He was furious. He asked me to tell my mother that this was the last effort of his chivalry. The jobs she gave him to do were too difficult. But I daresay he had been pleased enough to show the influence he had in that quarter. He knew my mother would tell the world’s wife all about it. He’s a spiteful, gingery little wretch. The top of his head shines like a billiard ball. I believe he polishes it every morning with a cloth. Of course they didn’t get further than the big drawing-room on the first floor, an enormous drawing-room with three pairs of columns in the middle. The double doors on the top of the staircase had been thrown wide open, as if for a visit from royalty. You can picture to yourself my mother, with her white hair done in some 18th century fashion and her sparkling black eyes, penetrating into those splendours attended by a sort of bald-headed, vexed squirrel—and Henry Allègre coming forward to meet them like a severe prince with the face of a tombstone Crusader, big white hands, muffled silken voice, half-shut eyes, as if looking down at them from a balcony. You remember that trick of his, Mills?” Mills emitted an enormous cloud of smoke out of his distended cheeks. “I daresay he was furious, too,” Blunt continued dispassionately. “But he was extremely civil. He showed her all the ‘treasures’ in the room, ivories, enamels, miniatures, all sorts of monstrosities from Japan, from India, from Timbuctoo . . . for all I know. . . He pushed his condescension so far as to have the ‘Girl in the Hat’ brought down into the drawing-room—half length, unframed. They put her on a chair for my mother to look at. The ‘Byzantine Empress’ was already there, hung on the end wall—full length, gold frame weighing half a ton. My mother first overwhelms the ‘Master’ with thanks, and then absorbs herself in the adoration of the ‘Girl in the Hat.’ Then she sighs out: ‘It should be called Diaphanéité, if there is such a word. Ah! This is the last expression of modernity!’ She puts up suddenly her face-à-main and looks towards the end wall. ‘And that—Byzantium itself! Who was she, this sullen and beautiful Empress?’ “‘The one I had in my mind was Theodosia!’ Allègre consented to answer. ‘Originally a slave girl—from somewhere.’ “My mother can be marvellously indiscreet when the whim takes her. She finds nothing better to do than to ask the ‘Master’ why he took his inspiration for those two faces from the same model. No doubt she was proud of her discerning eye. It was really clever of her. Allègre, however, looked on it as a colossal impertinence; but he answered in his silkiest tones: