He accepted the topic, and during the remainder of his visit she succeeded in keeping the conversation in the middle ground, although she had a sense of the ultimate futility of the effort; a sense of pressure being exerted, no matter what she said.  She presently discovered, however, that the taste for literature attributed to him which had seemed so incongruous—­existed.  He spoke with a new fire when she led him that way, albeit she suspected that some of the fuel was derived from the revelation that she shared his liking for books.  As the extent of his reading became gradually disclosed, however, her feeling of inadequacy grew, and she resolved in the future to make better use of her odd moments.  On her table, in two green volumes, was the life of a Massachusetts statesman that Mrs. Shorter had lent her.  She picked it up after Chiltern had gone.  He had praised it.

He left behind him a blurred portrait on her mind, as that of two men superimposed.  And only that morning he had had such a distinct impression of one.  It was from a consideration of this strange phenomenon, with her book lying open in her lap, that her maid aroused her to go to Mrs. Pryor’s.  This was Tuesday.

Some of the modern inventions we deem most marvellous have been fitted for ages to man and woman.  Woman, particularly, possesses for instance a kind of submarine bell; and, if she listens, she can at times hear it tinkling faintly.  And the following morning, Wednesday, Honora heard hers when she received an invitation to lunch at Mrs. Shorter’s.  After a struggle, she refused, but Mrs. Shorter called her up over the telephone, and she yielded.

“I’ve got Alfred Dewing for myself,” said Elsie Shorter, as she greeted Honora in the hall.  “He writes those very clever things—­you’ve read them.  And Hugh for you,” she added significantly.

The Shorter cottage, though commodious, was simplicity itself.  From the vine-covered pergola where they lunched they beheld the distant sea like a lavender haze across the flats.  And Honora wondered whether there were not an element of truth in what Mr. Dewing said of their hostess—­that she thought nothing immoral except novels with happy endings.  Chiltern did not talk much:  he looked at Honora.

“Hugh has got so serious,” said Elsie Shorter, “that sometimes I’m actually afraid of him.  You ought to have done something to be as serious as that, Hugh.”

“Done something!”

“Written the ‘Origin of Species,’ or founded a new political party, or executed a coup d’etat.  Half the time I’m under the delusion that I’m entertaining a celebrity under my roof, and I wake up and it’s only Hugh.”

“It’s because he looks as though he might do any of those things,” suggested Mr. Deming.  “Perhaps he may.”

“Oh,” said Elsie Shorter, “the men who do them are usually little wobbly specimens.”

Honora was silent, watching Chiltern.  At times the completeness of her understanding of him gave her an uncanny sensation; and again she failed to comprehend him at all.  She felt his anger go to a white heat, but the others seemed blissfully unaware of the fact.  The arrival of coffee made a diversion.