And Ursula Winwood, to whom Archbishops had been deferential and Cabinet Ministers had come for, guidance, meekly promised to send at once for Pater’s ‘Renaissance’ and so fill in a most lamentable gap in her education.

“My uncle, the Archdeacon,” she said, after a while, “reminded me that the great Savelli was a Venetian general—­of Roman family; and, strangely enough, his name, too, was Paul.  Perhaps that’s how you got the name.”

“That must be how,” said Paul dreamily.  He had not heard of the great general.  He had seen the name of Savelli somewhere—­also that of Torelli—­and had hesitated between the two.  Thinking it no great harm, he wove into words the clamour of his cherished romance.  “My parents died when I was quite young—­a baby—­and then I was brought to England.  So you see”—­he smiled in his winning way—­ “I’m absolutely English.”

“But you’ve kept your Italian love of beauty.”

“I hope so,” said Paul.

“Then I suppose you were brought up by guardians,” said Ursula.

“A guardian,” said Paul, anxious to cut down to a minimum the mythical personages that might be connected with his career.  “But I seldom saw him.  He lived in Paris chiefly.  He’s dead now.”

“What a poor little uncared-for waif you must have been.”

Paul laughed.  “Oh, don’t pity me.  I’ve had to think for myself a good deal, it is true.  But it has done me good.  Don’t you find it’s the things one learns for oneself—­whether they are about life or old china—­that are the most valuable?”

“Of course,” said Miss Winwood.  But she sighed, womanlike, at the thought of the little Paul—­(how beautiful he must have been as a child!)—­being brought up by servants and hirelings in a lonely house, his very guardian taking no concern in his welfare.

Thus it came about that, from the exiguous material supplied by Paul, Miss Winwood, not doubting his gentle birth and breeding, constructed for him a wholly fictitious set of antecedents.  Paul invented as little as possible and gratefully accepted her suggestions.  They worked together unconsciously.  Paul had to give some account of himself.  He had blotted Bludston and his modeldom out of his existence.  The passionate belief in his high and romantic birth was part of his being, and Miss Winwood’s recognition was a splendid confirmation of his faith.  It was rather the suppressio veri of which he was guilty than the propositio falsi.  So between them his childhood was invested with a vague semblance of reality in which the fact of his isolation stood out most prominent.

They had many talks together, not only on books and art, but on the social subjects in which Ursula was so deeply interested.  She found him well informed, with a curiously detailed knowledge of the everyday lives of the poor.  It did not occur to her that this knowledge came from his personal experience.  She attributed it to the many-sided genius of her paragon.