embroideries.  The air became full of agreeable exhalations, traceable to inanimate objects, or to a rose in a vase of common country glass; and if one turned to Alicia, one could almost observe the process by which they were absorbed in her and given forth again with a delicacy more vague.  Lindsay sometimes thought of the bee and flowers and honey, but always abandoned the simile as a trifle gross and material.  Certainly, as she sat there in her grace and slenderness and pale clear tints—­there was an effect of early morning about her that made the full tide of other women’s sunlight vulgar—­anyone would have been fastidious in the choice of a figure to present her in.  With suspicion of haughtiness she was drawn for the traditional marchioness; but she lifted her eyes and you saw that she appealed instead.  There was an art in the doing of her hair, a dainty elaboration that spoke of the most approved conventions beneath, yet it was impossible to mistake the freedom of spirit that lay in the lines of her blouse.  Even her gracefulness ran now and then into a downrightness of movement which suggested the assertion of a primitive sincerity in a personal world of many effects.  Into her making of tea, for example, she put nothing more sophisticated than sugar, and she ordered more bread and butter in the worst possible Hindustani without a thought except that the bread and butter should be brought.  Lindsay liked to think that with him she was particularly simple and direct, that he was of those who freed her from the pretty consciousness, the elegant restraint that other people fixed upon her.  It must be admitted that this conviction had reason in establishing itself, and it is perhaps not surprising that, in the security of it, he failed to notice occasions when it would not have held, of which this was plainly one.  Alicia reflected, with her cheek against the Afghan wolf-skins on the back of the chair.  It was characteristic of her eyes that one could usually see things being turned over in them.  She would sometimes keep people waiting while she thought.  She thought perceptibly about Hilda Howe, slanting her absent gaze between sheltering eyelids to the floor.  Presently she re-arranged the rose in its green glass vase and said:  “Then it’s impossible not to be interested.”

“I thought you would find it so.”

Alicia was further occupied in bestowing small fragments of cress sandwich upon a terrier.  “Fancy your being so sure,” she said, “that you could present her entertainingly!” She looked past him toward the soft light that came in at the draped window, and he was not aware that her regard held him fast by the way.

“Anyone could,” he said cheerfully; “she presents herself.  One is only the humblest possible medium.  And the most passive.”

Alicia’s eyes still rested upon the light from the window.  It silhouetted a rare fern from Assam, it certainly rewarded them.

“I like to hear you talk about her.  Tell me some more.”