Dr. André was waiting for her in the dim-lighted halls of the New Gallery, where large-eyed solemn-faced women, some of them so like Egidia, as she thought, looked down from the walls on Mrs. Elles in her somewhat elf-like prettiness, as of a picture by Tissot. All she had in common with them, was her large wide-open eyes, eyes without depth or mystery, and with unresting lids that had perhaps never drooped to hide an emotion worth the name, or a secret worth the keeping. “I was afraid you were not coming after all!” the hypnotist said, in his soft, authoritative voice. She sank on to a red leather causeuse, and blinked pathetically. “Don’t speak to me for a moment!” she whispered, throwing back her head and turning her profile only towards him. “You have a headache?” Dr. André asked sympathetically. She shook her head, and in that nugatory shake strove to indicate the region of her heart, as the seat of her uneasiness. He had the tact to hold his tongue, and presently she remarked, with a little sigh, “What nice pictures!” as a hint that conversation might begin. “You don’t care about pictures to-day,” he said, laughing. “You are terribly upset, I can see. Have you had bad news? Have you been fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus?” She was pleased at his way of putting things. He was alluding to her interviews with lawyers: of the circumstances in which she found herself he was now quite au fait. “Wild beasts!” she said. “Well, not quite that, but--people are very odd, and never behave exactly as one has a right to expect them to?” Her accent was slightly interrogative. “Most men will bully a woman if they get a chance!” said he, looking at her keenly. The butterfly did look a little crushed, a little subdued, as if she had only very recently been brought face to face with some of the crude realities of life of which she was always talking. “But it is against all my theories,” he continued. “I believe in people too much,” she went on. “And the consequence is, I give myself away, and make a fool of myself.” “You don’t say so?” said Dr. André, politely, and tenderly. He was not one who looked for wisdom in women; it was on charm that he insisted. He admired Mrs. Elles extremely. She reminded him of Heine’s famous definition of a latter-day Venus--“a cross between a dressmaker and a duchess.” The little touch of red on her cheek that was not rouge, but which gave her the faintly meretricious air beloved of décadents, pleased him; her large eyes, fuller at this moment of tears than of expression, were bent on him sadly and consciously appealing. By what art she avoided the vulgar catastrophe of falling tear-drops he did not know, but the brilliant result he could fully appreciate. He was a poseur himself, and her assumption of pose on his account flattered him.