“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man sighed. “The richest I’ve ever seen—an artistic intelligence really of the first order. And lodged in such a form!” St. George exclaimed. “One would like to represent such a girl as that,” Paul continued. “Ah there it is—there’s nothing like life!” said his companion. “When you’re finished, squeezed dry and used up and you think the sack’s empty, you’re still appealed to, you still get touches and thrills, the idea springs up—out of the lap of the actual—and shows you there’s always something to be done. But I shan’t do it—she’s not for me!” “How do you mean, not for you?” “Oh it’s all over—she’s for you, if you like.” “Ah much less!” said Paul. “She’s not for a dingy little man of letters; she’s for the world, the bright rich world of bribes and rewards. And the world will take hold of her—it will carry her away.” “It will try—but it’s just a case in which there may be a fight. It would be worth fighting, for a man who had it in him, with youth and talent on his side.” These words rang not a little in Paul Overt’s consciousness—they held him briefly silent. “It’s a wonder she has remained as she is; giving herself away so—with so much to give away.” “Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous—so natural? Oh she doesn’t care a straw—she gives away because she overflows. She has her own feelings, her own standards; she doesn’t keep remembering that she must be proud. And then she hasn’t been here long enough to be spoiled; she has picked up a fashion or two, but only the amusing ones. She’s a provincial—a provincial of genius,” St. George went on; “her very blunders are charming, her mistakes are interesting. She has come back from Asia with all sorts of excited curiosities and unappeased appetities. She’s first-rate herself and she expends herself on the second-rate. She’s life herself and she takes a rare interest in imitations. She mixes all things up, but there are none in regard to which she hasn’t perceptions. She sees things in a perspective—as if from the top of the Himalayas—and she enlarges everything she touches. Above all she exaggerates—to herself, I mean. She exaggerates you and me!” There was nothing in that description to allay the agitation caused in our younger friend by such a sketch of a fine subject. It seemed to him to show the art of St. George’s admired hand, and he lost himself in gazing at the vision—this hovered there before him—of a woman’s figure which should be part of the glory of a novel. But at the end of a moment the thing had turned into smoke, and out of the smoke—the last puff of a big cigar—proceeded the voice of General Fancourt, who had left the others and come and planted himself before the gentlemen on the sofa. “I suppose that when you fellows get talking you sit up half the night.” “Half the night?—jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene”—and St. George rose to his feet.