It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less than formerly of the projector of that unrealized structure.  Paul had a personal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to the world, and I was not often a spectator on these occasions.  Paul indeed, good fellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken intercourse, and to this end I was asked to dine now and then; but when I went I found guests of a new type, who, after dinner, talked of sport and stocks, while their host blinked at them silently through the smoke of his cheap cigars.

The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in the quality of the cigars.  Was this Daisy’s doing? (Mrs. Ambrose was Daisy.) It was hard to tell—­she produced her results so noiselessly.  With her fair bent head and vague smile, she seemed to watch life flow by without, as yet, trusting anything of her own to its current.  But she was watching, at any rate, and anything might come of that.  Such modifications as she produced were as yet almost imperceptible to any but the trained observer.  I saw that Paul wished her to be well dressed, but also that he suffered her to drive in a hired brougham, and to have her door opened by the raw-boned Celt who had bumped down the dishes on his bachelor table.  The drawing-room curtains were renewed, but this change served only to accentuate the enormities of the carpet, and perhaps discouraged Mrs. Ambrose from farther experiments.  At any rate, the desecrating touch that Halidon had affected to dread made no other inroads on the serried ugliness of the Ambrose interior.

In the early summer, when Ned returned, the Ambroses had flown to Europe again—­and the Academy was still on paper.

“Well, what do you make of her?” the traveller asked, as we sat over our first dinner together.

“Too many things—­and they don’t hang together.  Perhaps she’s still in the chrysalis stage.”

“Has Paul chucked the scheme altogether?”

“No.  He sent for me and we had a talk about it just before he sailed.”

“And what impression did you get?”

“That he had waited to send for me till just before he sailed.”

“Oh, there you go again!” I offered no denial, and after a pause he asked:  “Did she ever talk to you about it?”

“Yes.  Once or twice—­in snatches.”

“Well—?”

“She thinks it all too beautiful.  She would like to see beauty put within the reach of everyone.”

“And the practical side—?”

“She says she doesn’t understand business.”

Halidon rose with a shrug.  “Very likely you frightened her with your ugly sardonic grin.”

“It’s not my fault if my smile doesn’t add to the sum-total of beauty.”

“Well,” he said, ignoring me, “next winter we shall see.”