The veil lifted. Her smile was a flash of intelligence, the sexless, impersonal intelligence of the scholar. This maker of catalogues, with the tripping tongue that Greek made golden, he had touched the electric chain that linked them under the deep, under the social gulf. "Did you ever hear such a chorus? Pure liquid gold, every line of it. Still, you can read Sophocles with your hair on. I should have thought most worn--most ladies would like Euripides best?" "Why? Because they understand him best?" "No. Because he understood them best." "Did he understand them? Euripides," said the young lady with decision, "was a decadent." "Was he? How about the _Bacchæ_? Of course, it's worth all the rest of his plays put together; they're not in the same street with it. It's a thing to dream about, to go mad about." "My grandfather says it's not Euripidean." "Good Lord! How do we know it isn't the most Euripidean of the lot?" "Well, it stands alone, doesn't it?" "Yes. And he stands with it." "Does he? My grandfather was judging him by his average." "His average? Oh, I say, you know, you could reduce some very great poets to mediocrity by striking their average. Wouldn't you allow a man to be at least as great as his greatest achievement?" "I wonder--" "Anyhow, those are ripping good notes in that edition." "They ought to be. They were by a good scholar--his greatest achievement." He put down the Harden Euripides; and it struck Lucia that if Sir Joseph had been there this truthful young man would not have hesitated to put him down too. She laid her hand on the book with an air of possession and protection, which was a lesson in tact for the truthful young man. He leaned up against the bookcase with his hands in his pockets. "I say," said he, "I hope you don't mind my talking like this to you?" "No. Why shouldn't you?" "Well, it isn't exactly what I'm here for." That exciting conversation had lasted barely fifteen minutes; but it had set him for the time being at his ease. He had at any rate proved himself a scholar, and he was so far happier. He felt that he was beginning to get on with Miss Harden, to see a little way across the gulf, discerning the outlines of the further shore where that high lady walked unveiled. Then suddenly, owing to a most humiliating incident, the gulf yawned again.