There were eighteen or twenty women there when Ferdinand arrived, and no man... except a weakeyed captive husband or two, and an epicene creature with a violin, if you want to call them men. Ferdinand, with his bovine body and his leonine head, seemed almost startlingly masculine in this assemblage, and felt so. His spirit, he had often confessed, was an instrument that vibrated best in unison with the subtle feminine soul; he felt it play upon him and woo him, with little winds that ran their fingers through his hair. These were women who had no occupation, and a number of them had money; they felt delightfully cultivated when persons such as Ferdinand talked to them about the Soul. They warmed, they expanded, half unconsciously they projected those breaths and breezes which thrilled our Ferdinand and wrought upon his mood. If a woman, idle and mature, cannot find romance anywhere else or anyhow other she will pick upon a preacher or an artist. Mrs. Watson collected Ferdinands. Just how seriously she took them--how she regarded himself, specifically--Mr. Wimple could not be quite certain. “She is a woman of mystery,” Mr. Wimple often murmured to himself. And he wondered a good deal about her... sometimes he wondered if she were not in love with him. He had once written to her, a poem, which he entitled “Mystery.” She had let him see that she understood it, but she had not vouchsafed a solution of herself. It might be possible, Ferdinand thought, that she did _not_ love him... but she sympathized with him; she appreciated him; she had even fallen into a dreamy sadness one day, at the thought of how he must suffer from the disharmony in his home. For somehow, without much having been said by one or by the other, the knowledge had passed from Ferdinand to Mrs. Watson that there was not harmony in his home. She had understood. They had looked at each other, and she had understood. “Alethea!” he had murmured, under his breath. Alethea was her name. He was sure she had heard it; but she had neither accepted it from him, nor rejected it. And he had gone away without quite daring to say it again in a louder tone. There was only one thing about her that sometimes jarred upon Mr. Wimple... a sudden vein of levity. Sometimes Ferdinand, in his thoughts, even accused her of irony. And he was vaguely distrustful of a sense of the humorous in women; whether it took the form of a feeling for nonsense or a talent for sarcasm, it worried him. But she understood. She always understood... him and his message. And this afternoon she seemed to be understanding him, to be absorbing him and his message, with an increased sensitiveness. She regarded him with a new intentness, he thought; she was taking him with an expanded spiritual capacity.