"So he did meet her, after all?" the Duchessa said.
"Yes, he met her in the end," Peter answered.
They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright
perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at
Ventirose, where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August
day was hot and still and beautiful--a day made of gold and
velvet and sweet odours. The Duchessa lay back languidly,
among the crisp silk cushions, in her low, lounging chair; and
Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he must be
cautious, cautious.
"Yes, he met her in the end," he said.
"Well--? And then--?" she questioned, with a show of
eagerness, smiling into his eyes. "What happened? Did she
come up to his expectations? Or was she just the usual
disappointment? I have been pining--oh, but pining--to hear
the continuation of the story."
She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. "I must be
cautious," he told himself. "In more ways than one, this is a
crucial moment." At the same time, as a very part of his
caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant and candid.
"Oh, no--tutt' altro," he said, with an assumption of
nonchalant airiness and candid promptness. "She 'better
bettered' his expectations--she surpassed his fondest. She was
a thousand times more delightful than he had dreamed--though,
as you know, he had dreamed a good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres
turned out to be the feeblest, faintest echo of her."
The Duchessa meditated for an instant.
"It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a
disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion," she said, at
last.
"It seems so, indeed," assented Peter; "but disenchantment,
there was none. She was all that he had imagined, and
infinitely more. She was the substance--he had imagined the
shadow. He had divined her, as it were, from a single angle,
and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale reflection of
one side of her--a pencil-sketch in profile."
The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.
"You pile wonder upon wonder," she said. "That the reality
should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers
which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of
distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close
inspection! It's dead against the accepted theory of things.
And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable Pauline!
You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she
read his book?"