There had been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl’s high thoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, even words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and Beaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn’s confidential appeal to him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no means necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a master of illusion.  If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of good works to which her niece was visibly abandoning herself, Beaton could not doubt which she would choose; the only question was how real the danger of a life of good works was.

As he thought of these two girls, one so charming and the other so divine, it became indefinitely difficult to renounce them for Christine Dryfoos, with her sultry temper and her earthbound ideals.  Life had been so flattering to Beaton hitherto that he could not believe them both finally indifferent; and if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did not wish either of them to be very definite.  What he really longed for was their sympathy; for a man who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly on the feelings of others often has very tender feelings of his own, easily lacerated, and eagerly responsive to the caresses of compassion.  In this frame Beaton determined to go that afternoon, though it was not Mrs. Horn’s day, and call upon her in the hope of possibly seeing Miss Vance alone.  As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually went.  It did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. Horn to talking again about her niece, and Mrs. Horn again regretted that nothing could be done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works.

“Is she at home?  Will you let me see her?” asked Beacon, with something of the scientific interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose symptoms have been rehearsed to him.  He had not asked for her before.

“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret, and she did not return with her.  The girl entered with the gentle grace peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation, could not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look.  At sight of her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that they might be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart.  She wore black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received a nun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face.  “Decidedly,” thought Beaton, “she is far gone in good works.”

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt.  He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back upon possibilities which she ought not to neglect.