“The poor man thought it so, to be sure,” said Peter; “he fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her--then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end--he had to take it out in something--he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice--but now he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her--he possessed her--she lived under his roof--she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw her, knew her, felt her, realised her, in every detail of her mind, her soul, her person--down to the very intonations of her speech--down to the veins in her hands, the rings on her fingers--down to her very furs and laces, the frou-frou of her skirts, the scent upon her pocket-handkerchief. He had numbered the hairs of her head, almost.” Again the Duchessa mused for a while in silence, opening and shutting her fan, and gazing into its opals. “I am thinking of it from the woman's point of view,” she said, by and by. “To have played such a part in a man's life--and never to have dreamed it! Never even, very likely, to have dreamed that such a man existed--for it's entirely possible she didn't notice him, on those occasions when he saw her. And to have been the subject of such a novel--and never to have dreamed that, either! To have read the novel perhaps--without dreaming for an instant that there was any sort of connection between Pauline and herself! Or else--what would almost be stranger still--not to have read the novel, not to have heard of it! To have inspired such a book, such a beautiful book--yet to remain in sheer unconscious ignorance that there was such a book! Oh, I think it is even more extraordinary from the woman's point of view than from the man's. There is something almost terrifying about it. To have had such an influence on the destiny of someone you've never heard of! There's a kind of intangible sense of a responsibility.” “There is also, perhaps,” laughed Peter, “a kind of intangible sense of a liberty taken. I'm bound to say I think Wildmay was decidedly at his ease. To appropriate in that cool fashion the personality of a total stranger! But artists are the most unprincipled folk unhung. Ils prennent leur bien la, ou ils le trouvent.”