While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable dimple.  It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired.  She owned that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert.  Besides, the English were not liked just now!

“That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal to the French.”

“It has its disadvantages.”

Jolyon nodded.

“Well, you must let me take you about while I’m here.  We’ll start to-morrow.  Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go to the Opera-Comique.”

It was the beginning of daily meetings.

Jolyon soon found that for those who desired a static condition of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be friendly with a pretty woman.  Revelation was alighting like a bird in his heart, singing:  ’Elle est ton reve!  Elle est ton reve!  Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous—­a bad case of elderly rapture.  Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could never return—­and how could she at his age?—­hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind.  He was full, too, of resentment, at the waste and loneliness of her life.  Aware of being some comfort to her, and of the pleasure she clearly took in their many little outings, he was amiably desirous of doing and saying nothing to destroy that pleasure.  It was like watching a starved plant draw up water, to see her drink in his companionship.  So far as they could tell, no one knew her address except himself; she was unknown in Paris, and he but little known, so that discretion seemed unnecessary in those walks, talks, visits to concerts, picture-galleries, theatres, little dinners, expeditions to Versailles, St. Cloud, even Fontainebleau.  And time fled—­one of those full months without past to it or future.  What in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry—­arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive:  for her philosophy of life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by emotion more than by reason, ironically mistrustful, susceptible to beauty, almost passionately humane and tolerant, yet subject to instinctive rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable.  And during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with which