“Every time one sees it one likes it better.”  And they talked about Ingres for some time, until Owen’s thoughts went back to Evelyn, and looking from the portrait by Ingres to the drawing by Boucher he seemed suddenly to lose control; tears rose to his eyes, and Harding watched him, wondering whither Owen’s imagination carried him.  “Is he far away in Paris, hearing her sing for the first time to Madame Savelli?  Or is he standing with her looking over the bulwarks of the Medusa, seeing the shape of some Greek island dying in the twilight?” And Harding did not speak, feeling the lover’s meditation to be sacred.  Owen flung himself into an arm-chair, and without withdrawing his eyes from the picture, said, relying on Harding’s friendship: 

“It is very like her, it is really very like her.  I am much obliged to you, Harding, for having bought it.  I shall come here to see it occasionally.”

“And I’ll present you with a key, so that when I am away you can spend your leisure in front of the picture....  Do you know whom I shall feel like?  Like the friend of King Condules.”

“But she’ll not ask you to conspire to assassinate me.  My murder would profit you nothing.  All the same, Harding, now I come to think of it, there’s a good deal of that queen in Evelyn, or did she merely desire to take advantage of the excuse to get rid of her husband?”

“Ancient myths are never very explicit; one reads whatever psychology one likes into them.  Perhaps that is why they never grow old.”

The door opened...  Harding’s servant brought in a parcel of proofs.

“My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor tells me he’ll be much obliged if I look through it at once.”

“Shall I wait?”

“Well, I’d sooner you didn’t.  Correcting a proof with me means a rewriting, and—­”

“You can’t concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the room.  I understand.  Are you dining anywhere?”

“I’m not engaged.”

The thought crossed Harding’s mind when Owen left the room that it would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome.  “No matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back to her very soon....  But to leave him alone all the evening would be selfish, and if I don’t dine with him I shall have to dine alone....”  Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found waiting for him at his club.

“My dear friend, I quite agree with you,” he said, sitting down to the table; “what you want is change.”

“Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?”

“Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will.”  And he spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.