To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half an hour the pair talked over the Master’s principal productions. She knew them well—she knew them even better than her visitor, who was struck with her critical intelligence and with something large and bold in the movement in her mind. She said things that startled him and that evidently had come to her directly; they weren’t picked-up phrases—she placed them too well. St. George had been right about her being first-rate, about her not being afraid to gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenly something came back to her, and she said: “I recollect that he did speak of Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, apropos of something or other, that she didn’t care for perfection.” “That’s a great crime in an artist’s wife,” Paul returned. “Yes, poor thing!” and the girl sighed with a suggestion of many reflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently added: “Ah perfection, perfection—how one ought to go in for it! I wish _I_ could.” “Every one can in his way,” her companion opined. “In _his_ way, yes—but not in hers. Women are so hampered—so condemned! Yet it’s a kind of dishonour if you don’t, when you want to _do_ something, isn’t it?” Miss Fancourt pursued, dropping one train in her quickness to take up another, an accident that was common with her. So these two young persons sat discussing high themes in their eclectic drawing-room, in their London “season”—discussing, with extreme seriousness, the high theme of perfection. It must be said in extenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in the business. Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty; they weren’t posturing for each other or for some one else.