Sex was there--all the mystery, magic, all the essential, elemental principles of the Feminine, were there: she was a woman. A wonderful, strenuous soul was there: Wildmay saw it, felt it. He did n't know her--he had no hope of ever knowing her--but he knew her better than he knew any one else in the world. She became the absorbing subject of his thoughts, the heroine of his dreams. She became, in fact, the supreme influence of his life.” The Duchessa's eyes had not lost their intentness, while he was speaking. Now that he had finished, she looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and mused for a moment in silence. At last she looked up again. “It's as strange as anything I have ever heard,” she said, “it's furiously strange--and romantic--and interesting. But--but--” She frowned a little, hesitating between a choice of questions. “Oh, it's a story all compact of 'buts,'” Peter threw out laughing. She let the remark pass her--she had settled upon her question. “But how could he endure such a situation?” she asked. “How could he sit still under it? Did n't he try in any way--did n't he make any effort at all--to--to find her out--to discover who she was--to get introduced to her? I should think he could never have rested--I should think he would have moved heaven and earth.” “What could he do? Tell me a single thing he could have done,” said Peter. “Society has made no provision for a case like his. It 's absurd--but there it is. You see a woman somewhere; you long to make her acquaintance; and there's no natural bar to your doing so--you 're a presentable man she's what they call a lady--you're both, more or less, of the same monde. Yet there 's positively no way known by which you can contrive it--unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just happens to drop a common acquaintance between you, at the right time and place. Chance, in Wildmay's case, happened to drop all the common acquaintances they may possibly have had at a deplorable distance. He was alone on each of the occasions when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to introduce him; there was no one he could apply to for information concerning her. He could n't very well follow her carriage through the streets--dog her to her lair, like a detective. Well--what then?” The Duchessa was playing with her fan again. “No,” she agreed; “I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems rather hard on the poor man--rather baffling and tantalising.”