‘And if they are not within my reach?’ she asked, without looking at him.

‘By-the-bye’ —­ he disregarded her question —­ ’your friend, Mrs Carnaby, has taken a long flight.’

‘Yes.’

The monosyllable was dropped.  Alma walked with her eyes on the ground, trailing her sunshade.

’I didn’t think she had much taste for travel.  But you know her so much better than I do.’

‘She is enjoying herself,’ said Alma.

‘No need for you to go so far.  Down yonder’ —­ he nodded southward —­ ’I was thinking, the other day, of the different kinds of pleasure one gets from scenery in different parts of the world.  I have seen the tropics; they left me very much where I was, intellectually.  It’s the human associations of natural beauty that count.  You have no desire to go to the islands of the Pacific?’

‘I can’t say that I have.’

’Of course not.  The springs of art are in the old world.  Among the vines and the olives one hears a voice.  I must really try to give you some idea of my little place at Riva.’

He began a playful description —­ long, but never tedious; alluring, yet without enthusiasm —­ a dreamy suggestion of refined delights and luxuries.

’I have another place in the Pyrenees, to suit another mood; and not long ago I was sorely tempted by the offer of a house not far from Antioch, in the valley of the Orontes —­ a house built by an Englishman.  Charming place, and so entirely off the beaten track.  Isn’t there a fascination in the thought of living near Antioch?  Well away from bores and philistines.  No Mrs. Grundy with her clinking tea-cups.  I dare say the house is still to be had. —­ Oh, do tell me something about your friend, Fraulein Steinfeld.  Is she in earnest?  Will she do anything?’

His eloquence was at an end.  Thenceforward he talked of common things in unemotional language; and when Alma parted from him, it was with a sense of being tired and disappointed.

On the following day she did not see him at all.  He could not have left Bregenz, for, of course, he would have let her know.  She thought of him incessantly, reviewing all his talk, turning over this and that ambiguous phrase, asking herself whether he meant much or little.  It was natural that she should compare and contrast his behaviour with that of Felix Dymes.  If his motive were not the same, why did he seek her society?  And if it were?  If at length he spoke out, summing his hints in the plain offer of all those opportunities she lacked?

A brilliant temptation.  To leave the world as Alma Frothingham, and to return to it as Mrs. Cyrus Redgrave!

But, in that event, what of her musical ambitions?  He spoke of her art as the supreme concern, to which all else must be subordinate.  And surely that was his meaning when he threw scorn upon ’bores and philistines’.  Why should the fact of his wealth interfere with her progress as an artist?  Possibly, on the other hand, he did not intend that she should follow a professional career.  Cannot one be a great artist without standing on public platforms?  Was it his lordly thought to foster her talents for his own delectation and that of the few privileged?