The talk was animated now. The party bloomed to its fullest life. Miss Daindrie was curiously self-conscious about Dr. Westerling’s oration. She was teasing him. How steady she was, for one with a perfume so diffident and sweet! He did not like her jests. His mind sensed only dully what they meant: sharply what she meant behind them. For some reason, a rebuke. He bore it. He was used to battle, and to resistance. He was used to rebukes. But he was uneasy. The cruder lists of argument and quarrel were more to his measure. It seemed to him that this Mr. Purze, if he was an artist, needed a lot of informing. “We _have_ here a tendency,” he found the need of explaining his debate to Miss Daindrie, “----to misjudge America by overlooking what America excels in, and wishing in our hearts she were merely another Europe.” Mr. Purze was suddenly agreeing. He saved the Doctor from another teasing. He was nothing, if not a soother of self-important people. He was marvelously informed in the prerequisites of his art of portraiture. He knew who Westerling was. Not rich, but already an emerging figure at the great Magnum Institute. Great men sat for portraits. Westerling discoursed on the need of a new critical scientific standard in Art. Did not Mr. Purze agree? Oh, indeed. It was nonsense, was it not? to say that values in beauty could not be determined like any other element in a material solution. Painting was a chemical solution. Music and poetry were physical solutions: sound waves illustrative of certain documentary matter which of course was open to intellectual appraisal.... He was very interested in that. “I was invited sometime ago to a private recital of Lahlberg. You know--that Russian pianist. He played many of his own compositions. I asked him to state to me in scientific terms what his music meant: why, for instance, he used seconds and sevenths where Chopin employed thirds and fifths. He was quite dumb, I assure you. I needed no further proof of what I had already expected----” the Doctor had meant to say “suspected”--: “the man is a clever charlatan.” “But he plays so beautifully,” pleaded Mrs. Purze. “We cannot trust uneducated senses any more than we can uneducated people.” “No,” decided Cornelia in herself, “this is not what she wants.” She had been watching Helen Daindrie with a growing singleness of interest. She saw how the girl’s body faintly stiffened when the Doctor spoke. She was aware of the implied direction, of the source of the heat of his words: she was attentive, she was respectful and impressed. And yet, Cornelia felt a specific turning away in the young girl’s mind, a wavering of interest, almost a recoil and a revolt from this intellectual tribute. He did not really hold her. When she wandered, Cornelia saw her relax. Now, during these last long words, suddenly Miss Daindrie turned and met Cornelia’s eyes. In them a twinkle of disdain, a gladness to be looking away.