“I’ve kept you a long time, but it’s supposed not usually to be a bad place, my salon; there are various things to look at and perhaps you’ve noticed some of them. Over on that side for instance is rather a curious collection of miniatures.” She spoke abruptly, quickly, as if conscious that their communion might be awkward and she were trying to strike instantly (to conjure that element away) the sort of note that would make them both most comfortable. Quickly too she sat down before her tea-tray and poured him out a cup, which she handed him without asking if he would have it. He accepted it with a trembling hand, though he had no desire for it; he was too nervous to swallow the tea, but it wouldn’t have appeared to him possible to decline. When he had murmured that he had indeed looked at all her things, but that it would take hours to do justice to such treasures, she asked if he were fond of works of art; immediately adding, however, that she was afraid he had not many opportunities of seeing them, though of course there were the public collections, open to all. He replied with perfect veracity that some of the happiest moments of his life had been spent at the British Museum and the National Gallery, and this fact appeared to interest her greatly, so that she straightway begged him to tell her what he thought of certain pictures and antiques. In this way it was that in an incredibly short time, as appeared to him, he found himself discussing the Bacchus and Ariadne and the Elgin Marbles with one of the most remarkable women in Europe. It was true that she herself talked most, passing precipitately from one point to another, putting questions and not waiting for answers, describing and qualifying things, expressing feelings, by the aid of phrases that he had never heard before but which seemed to him illuminating and happy—as when for instance she asked what art was, after all, but a synthesis made in the interest of pleasure, or said that she didn’t like England in the least, but absurdly loved it. It didn’t occur to him to think these discriminations pedantic. Suddenly she threw off, “Madame Grandoni told me you saw my husband.” “Ah, was the gentleman your husband?” “Unfortunately! What do you think of him?” “Oh, I can’t think—!” Hyacinth decently pleaded. “I wish I couldn’t either! I haven’t seen him for nearly three years. He wanted to see me to-day, but I refused.” “Ah!”—and the young man stared, not knowing how he ought to receive so unexpected a confidence. Then as the suggestions of inexperience are sometimes the happiest of all he spoke simply what was in his mind and said gently: “It has made you—naturally—nervous.” Later on, when he had left the house, he wondered how at that stage he could have ventured on such a familiar remark.