I will not dwell on Naumann’s jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon that evening, or on his dithyrambs about Dorothea’s charm, in all which Will joined, but with a difference.  No sooner did Naumann mention any detail of Dorothea’s beauty, than Will got exasperated at his presumption:  there was grossness in his choice of the most ordinary words, and what business had he to talk of her lips?  She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women were.  Will could not say just what he thought, but he became irritable.  And yet, when after some resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons to his friend’s studio, he had been allured by the gratification of his pride in being the person who could grant Naumann such an opportunity of studying her loveliness—­or rather her divineness, for the ordinary phrases which might apply to mere bodily prettiness were not applicable to her. (Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood, as well as Dorothea herself, would have been surprised at her beauty being made so much of.  In that part of the world Miss Brooke had been only a “fine young woman.”)

“Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann.  Mrs. Casaubon is not to be talked of as if she were a model,” said Will.  Naumann stared at him.

“Schon!  I will talk of my Aquinas.  The head is not a bad type, after all.  I dare say the great scholastic himself would have been flattered to have his portrait asked for.  Nothing like these starchy doctors for vanity!  It was as I thought:  he cared much less for her portrait than his own.”

“He’s a cursed white-blooded pedantic coxcomb,” said Will, with gnashing impetuosity.  His obligations to Mr. Casaubon were not known to his hearer, but Will himself was thinking of them, and wishing that he could discharge them all by a check.

Naumann gave a shrug and said, “It is good they go away soon, my dear.  They are spoiling your fine temper.”

All Will’s hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing Dorothea when she was alone.  He only wanted her to take more emphatic notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special in her remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be.  He was rather impatient under that open ardent good-will, reach he saw was her usual state of feeling.  The remote worship of a woman throned out of their reach plays a great part in men’s lives, but in most cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recognition, some approving sign by which his soul’s sovereign may cheer him without descending from her high place.  That was precisely what Will wanted.  But there were plenty of contradictions in his imaginative demands.  It was beautiful to see how Dorothea’s eyes turned with wifely anxiety and beseeching to Mr. Casaubon:  she would have lost some of her halo if she had been without that duteous preoccupation; and yet at the next moment the husband’s sandy absorption of such nectar was too intolerable; and Will’s longing to say damaging things about him was perhaps not the less tormenting because he felt the strongest reasons for restraining it.