It is needless to narrate our interview in detail; indeed,
to tell the perfect truth, I was punished for my rash attempt to surprise
her by a temporary eclipse of my own perspicacity. She sat there so
questioning, so perceptive, so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal,
that I was quite ready at the end of half an hour to subscribe to the
most comprehensive of Pickering's rhapsodies. She was certainly a
wonderful woman. I have never liked to linger, in memory, on that half-
hour. The result of it was to prove that there were many more things in
the composition of a woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her
imagination in the place of her heart than were dreamt of in my
philosophy. Yet, as I sat there stroking my hat and balancing the
account between nature and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very
competent philosopher. She had said she wished me to tell her everything
about our friend, and she questioned me as to his family, his fortune,
his antecedents, and his character. All this was natural in a woman who
had received a passionate declaration of love, and it was expressed with
an air of charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there was really
no mistake about his being a most distinguished young man, and that if I
chose to be explicit, I might deepen her conviction to disinterested
ecstasy, which might have almost provoked me to invent a good opinion, if
I had not had one ready made.
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