“Ah,” said Peter, laughing, “you touch the secret springs of my friend’s inspiration.  That is a story in itself.  Felix Wildmay is a perfectly commonplace Englishman.  How could a woman like Pauline be the creature of his imagination?  No—­she was a ‘thing seen.’  God made her.  Wildmay was a mere copyist.  He drew her, tant bien que mal, from the life from a woman who’s actually alive on this dull globe to-day.  But that’s the story.”

The Duchessa’s eyes were intent.

“The story-?  Tell me the story,” she pronounced in a breath, with imperious eagerness.

And her eyes waited, intently.

“Oh,” said Peter, “it’s one of those stories that can scarcely be told.  There’s hardly any thing to take hold of.  It’s without incident, without progression—­it’s all subjective —­it’s a drama in states of mind.  Pauline was a ‘thing seen,’ indeed; but she wasn’t a thing known:  she was a thing divined.  Wildmay never knew her—­never even knew who she was—­never knew her name—­never even knew her nationality, though, as the book shows, he guessed her to be an Englishwoman, married to a Frenchman.  He simply saw her, from a distance, half-a-dozen times perhaps.  He saw her in Paris, once or twice, at the theatre, at the opera; and then later again, once or twice, in London; and then, once more, in Paris, in the Bois.  That was all, but that was enough.  Her appearance—­her face, her eyes, her smile, her way of carrying herself, her way of carrying her head, her gestures, her movements, her way of dressing—­he never so much as heard her voice—­her mere appearance made an impression on him such as all the rest of womankind had totally failed to make.  She was exceedingly lovely, of course, exceedingly distinguished, noble-looking; but she was infinitely more.  Her face her whole person—­had an expression!  A spirit burned in her—­a prismatic, aromatic fire.  Other women seemed dust, seemed dead, beside her.  She was a garden, inexhaustible, of promises, of suggestions.  Wit, capriciousness, generosity, emotion—­you have said it—­they were all there.  Race was there, nerve.  Sex was there—­all the mystery, magic, all the essential, elemental principles of the Feminine, were there:  she was a woman.  A wonderful, strenuous soul was there:  Wildmay saw it, felt it.  He did n’t know her —­he had no hope of ever knowing her—­but he knew her better than he knew any one else in the world.  She became the absorbing subject of his thoughts, the heroine of his dreams.  She became, in fact, the supreme influence of his life.”

The Duchessa’s eyes had not lost their intentness, while he was speaking.  Now that he had finished, she looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and mused for a moment in silence.  At last she looked up again.

“It’s as strange as anything I have ever heard,” she said, “it’s furiously strange—­and romantic—­and interesting.  But —­but—­” She frowned a little, hesitating between a choice of questions.