On a dreary afternoon of November, when London was closely wrapped in a yellow fog, Hermione Lester was sitting by the fire in her house in Eaton Place reading a bundle of letters, which she had just taken out of her writing-table drawer. She was expecting a visit from the writer of the letters, Emile Artois, who had wired to her on the previous day that he was coming over from Paris by the night train and boat.

Miss Lester was a woman of thirty-four, five feet ten in height, flat, thin, but strongly built, with a large waist and limbs which, though vigorous, were rather unwieldy. Her face was plain: rather square and harsh in outline, with blunt, almost coarse features, but a good complexion, clear and healthy, and large, interesting, and slightly prominent brown eyes, full of kindness, sympathy, and brightness, full, too, of eager intelligence and of energy, eyes of a woman who was intensely alive both in body and in mind. The look of swiftness, a look most attractive in either human being or in animal, was absent from her body but was present in her eyes, which showed forth the spirit in her with a glorious frankness and a keen intensity. Nevertheless, despite these eyes and her thickly growing, warm-colored, and wavy brown hair, she was a plain, almost an ugly woman, whose attractive force issued from within, inviting inquiry and advance, as the flame of a fire does, playing on the blurred glass of a window with many flaws in it.

Hermione was, in fact, found very attractive by a great many people of varying temperaments and abilities, who were captured by her spirit and by her intellect, the soul of the woman and the brains, and who, while seeing clearly and acknowledging frankly the plainness of her face and the almost masculine ruggedness of her form, said, with a good deal of truth, that "somehow they didn't seem to matter in Hermione." Whether Hermione herself was of this opinion not many knew. Her general popularity, perhaps, made the world incurious about the subject.

The room in which Hermione was reading the letters of Artois was small and crammed with books. There were books in cases uncovered by glass from floor to ceiling, some in beautiful bindings, but many in tattered paper covers, books that looked as if they had been very much read. On several tables, among photographs and vases of flowers, were more books and many magazines, both English and foreign. A large writing-table was littered with notes and letters. An upright grand-piano stood open, with a quantity of music upon it. On the thick Persian carpet before the fire was stretched a very large St. Bernard dog, with his muzzle resting on his paws and his eyes blinking drowsily in serene contentment.

As Hermione read the letters one by one her face showed a panorama of expressions, almost laughably indicative of her swiftly passing thoughts. Sometimes she smiled. Once or twice she laughed aloud, startling the dog, who lifted his massive head and gazed at her with profound inquiry. Then she shook her head, looked grave, even sad, or earnest and full of sympathy, which seemed longing to express itself in a torrent of comforting words. Presently she put the letters together, tied them up carelessly with a piece of twine, and put them back into the drawer from which she had taken them. Just as she had finished doing this the door of the room, which was ajar, was pushed softly open, and a dark-eyed, Eastern-looking boy dressed in livery appeared.

"What is it, Selim?" asked Hermione, in French.

"Monsieur Artois, madame."

"Emile!" cried Hermione, getting up out of her chair with a sort of eager slowness. "Where is he?"

"He is here!" said a loud voice, also speaking French.

Selim stood gracefully aside, and a big man stepped into the room and took the two hands which Hermione stretched out in his.

"Don't let any one else in, Selim," said Hermione to the boy.

"Especially the little Townly," said Artois, menacingly.

"Hush, Emile! Not even Miss Townly if she calls, Selim."

Selim smiled with grave intelligence at the big man, said, "I understand, madame," and glided out.

"Why, in Heaven's name, have you—you, pilgrim of the Orient—insulted the East by putting Selim into a coat with buttons and cloth trousers?" exclaimed Artois, still holding Hermione's hands.

"It's an outrage, I know. But I had to. He was stared at and followed, and he actually minded it. As soon as I found out that, I trampled on all my artistic prejudices, and behold him—horrible but happy! Thank you for coming—thank you."

She let his hands go, and they stood for a moment looking at each other in the firelight.

Artois was a tall man of about forty-three, with large, almost Herculean limbs, a handsome face, with regular but rather heavy features, and very big gray eyes, that always looked penetrating and often melancholy. His forehead was noble and markedly intellectual, and his well-shaped, massive head was covered with thick, short, mouse-colored hair. He wore a mustache and a magnificent beard. His barber, who was partly responsible for the latter, always said of it that it was the "most beautiful fan-shaped beard in Paris," and regarded it with a pride which was probably shared by its owner. His hands and feet were good, capable-looking, but not clumsy, and his whole appearance gave an impression of power, both physical and intellectual, and of indomitable will combined with subtlety. He was well dressed, fashionably not artistically, yet he suggested an artist, not necessarily a painter. As he looked at Hermione the smile which had played about his lips when he entered the little room died away.

"I've come to hear about it all," he said, in his resonant voice—a voice which matched his appearance. "Do you know"—and here his accent was grave, almost reproachful—"that in all your letters to me—I looked them over before I left Paris—there is no allusion, not one, to this Monsieur Delarey."

"Why should there be?" she answered.

She sat down, but Artois continued to stand.

"We seldom wrote of persons, I think. We wrote of events, ideas, of work, of conditions of life; of man, woman, child—yes—but not often of special men, women, children. I am almost sure—in fact, quite sure, for I've just been reading them—that in your letters to me there is very little discussion of our mutual friends, less of friends who weren't common to us both."

As she spoke she stretched out a long, thin arm, and pulled open the drawer into which she had put the bundle tied with twine.

"They're all in here."

"You don't lock that drawer?"

"Never."

He looked at her with a sort of severity.

"I lock the door of the room, or, rather, it locks itself. You haven't noticed it?"

"No."

"It's the same as the outer door of a flat. I have a latch-key to it."

He said nothing, but smiled. All the sudden grimness had gone out of his face.

Hermione withdrew her hand from the drawer holding the letters.

"Here they are!"

"My complaints, my egoism, my ambitions, my views—Mon Dieu! Hermione, what a good friend you've been!"

"And some people say you're not modest!"

"I—modest! What is modesty? I know my own value as compared with that of others, and that knowledge to others must often seem conceit."

She began to untie the packet, but he stretched out his hand and stopped her.

"No, I didn't come from Paris to read my letters, or even to hear you read them! I came to hear about this Monsieur Delarey."

Selim stole in with tea and stole out silently, shutting the door this time. As soon as he had gone, Artois drew a case from his pocket, took out of it a pipe, filled it, and lit it. Meanwhile, Hermione poured out tea, and, putting three lumps of sugar into one of the cups, handed it to Artois.

"I haven't come to protest. You know we both worship individual freedom. How often in those letters haven't we written it—our respect of the right of the individual to act for him or herself, without the interference of outsiders? No, I've come to hear about it all, to hear how you managed to get into the pleasant state of mania."

On the last words his deep voice sounded sarcastic, almost patronizing. Hermione fired up at once.

"None of that from you, Emile!" she exclaimed.

Artois stirred his tea rather more than was necessary, but did not begin to drink it.

"You mustn't look down on me from a height," she continued. "I won't have it. We're all on a level when we're doing certain things, when we're truly living, simply, frankly, following our fates, and when we're dying. You feel that. Drop the analyst, dear Emile, drop the professional point of view. I see right through it into your warm old heart. I never was afraid of you, although I place you high, higher than your critics, higher than your public, higher than you place yourself. Every woman ought to be able to love, and every man. There's nothing at all absurd in the fact, though there may be infinite absurdities in the manifestation of it. But those you haven't yet had an opportunity of seeing in me, so you've nothing yet to laugh at or label. Now drink your tea."

He laughed a loud, roaring laugh, drank some of his tea, puffed out a cloud of smoke, and said:

"Whom will you ever respect?"

"Every one who is sincere—myself included."

"Be sincere with me now, and I'll go back to Paris to-morrow like a shorn lamb. Be sincere about Monsieur Delarey."

Hermione sat quite still for a moment with the bundle of letters in her lap. At last she said:

"It's difficult sometimes to tell the truth about a feeling, isn't it?"

"Ah, you don't know yourself what the truth is."

"I'm not sure that I do. The history of the growth of a feeling may be almost more complicated than the history of France."

Artois, who was a novelist, nodded his head with the air of a man who knew all about that.

"Maurice—Maurice Delarey has cared for me, in that way, for a long time. I was very much surprised when I first found it out."

"Why, in the name of Heaven?"

"Well, he's wonderfully good-looking."

"No explanation of your astonishment."

"Isn't it? I think, though, it was that fact which astonished me, the fact of a very handsome man loving me."

"Now, what's your theory?"

He bent down his head a little towards her, and fixed his great, gray eyes on her face.

"Theory! Look here, Emile, I dare say it's difficult for a man like you, genius, insight, and all, thoroughly to understand how an ugly woman regards beauty, an ugly woman like me, who's got intellect and passion and intense feeling for form, color, every manifestation of beauty. When I look at beauty I feel rather like a dirty little beggar staring at an angel. My intellect doesn't seem to help me at all. In me, perhaps, the sensation arises from an inward conviction that humanity was meant originally to be beautiful, and that the ugly ones among us are—well, like sins among virtues. You remember that book of yours which was and deserved to be your one artistic failure, because you hadn't put yourself really into it?"

Artois made a wry face.

"Eventually you paid a lot of money to prevent it from being published any more. You withdrew it from circulation. I sometimes feel that we ugly ones ought to be withdrawn from circulation. It's silly, perhaps, and I hope I never show it, but there the feeling is. So when the handsomest man I had ever seen loved me, I was simply amazed. It seemed to me ridiculous and impossible. And then, when I was convinced it was possible, very wonderful, and, I confess it to you, very splendid. It seemed to help to reconcile me with myself in a way in which I had never been reconciled before."

"And that was the beginning?"

"I dare say. There were other things, too. Maurice Delarey isn't at all stupid, but he's not nearly so intelligent as I am."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"The fact of this physical perfection being humble with me, looking up to me, seemed to mean a great deal. I think Maurice feels about intellect rather as I do about beauty. He made me understand that he must. And that seemed to open my heart to him in an extraordinary way. Can you understand?"

"Yes. Give me some more tea, please."

He held out his cup. She filled it, talking while she did so. She had become absorbed in what she was saying, and spoke without any self-consciousness.

"I knew my gift, such as it is, the gift of brains, could do something for him, though his gift of beauty could do nothing for me—in the way of development. And that, too, seemed to lead me a step towards him. Finally—well, one day I knew I wanted to marry him. And so, Emile, I'm going to marry him. Here!"

She held out to him his cup full of tea.

"There's no sugar," he said.

"Oh—the first time I've forgotten."

"Yes."

The tone of his voice made her look up at him quickly and exclaim:

"No, it won't make any difference!"

"But it has. You've forgotten for the first time. Cursed be the egotism of man."

He sat down in an arm-chair on the other side of the tea-table.

"It ought to make a difference. Maurice Delarey, if he is a man—and if you are going to marry him he must be—will not allow you to be the Egeria of a fellow who has shocked even Paris by telling it the naked truth."

"Yes, he will. I shall drop no friendship for him, and he knows it. There is not one that is not honest and innocent. Thank God I can say that. If you care for it, Emile, we can both add to the size of the letter bundles."

He looked at her meditatively, even rather sadly.

"You are capable of everything in the way of friendship, I believe," he said. "Even of making the bundle bigger with a husband's consent. A husband's—I suppose the little Townly's upset? But she always is."

"When you're there. You don't know Evelyn. You never will. She's at her worst with you because you terrify her. Your talent frightens her, but your appearance frightens her even more."

"I am as God made me."

"With the help of the barber. It's your beard as much as anything else."

"What does she say of this affair? What do all your innumerable adorers say?"

"What should they say? Why should anybody be surprised? It's surely the most natural thing in the world for a woman, even a very plain woman, to marry. I have always heard that marriage is woman's destiny, and though I don't altogether believe that, still I see no special reason why I should never marry if I wish to. And I do wish to."

"That's what will surprise the little Townly and the gaping crowd."

"I shall begin to think I've seemed unwomanly all these years."

"No. You're an extraordinary woman who astonishes because she is going to do a very important thing that is very ordinary."

"It doesn't seem at all ordinary to me."

Emile Artois began to stroke his beard. He was determined not to feel jealous. He had never wished to marry Hermione, and did not wish to marry her now, but he had come over from Paris secretly a man of wrath.

"You needn't tell me that," he said. "Of course it is the great event to you. Otherwise you would never have thought of doing it."

"Exactly. Are you astonished?"

"I suppose I am. Yes, I am."

"I should have thought you were far too clever to be so."

"Exactly what I should have thought. But what living man is too clever to be an idiot? I never met the gentleman and never hope to."

"You looked upon me as the eternal spinster?"

"I looked upon you as Hermione Lester, a great creature, an extraordinary creature, free from the prejudices of your sex and from its pettinesses, unconventional, big brained, generous hearted, free as the wind in a world of monkey slaves, careless of all opinion save your own, but humbly obedient to the truth that is in you, human as very few human beings are, one who ought to have been an artist but who apparently preferred to be simply a woman."

Hermione laughed, winking away two tears.

"Well, Emile dear, I'm being very simply a woman now, I assure you."

"And why should I be surprised? You're right. What is it makes me surprised?"

He sat considering.

"Perhaps it is that you are so unusual, so individual, that my imagination refuses to project the man on whom your choice could fall. I project the snuffy professor—Impossible! I project the Greek god—again my mind cries, 'Impossible!' Yet, behold, it is in very truth the Greek god, the ideal of the ordinary woman."

"You know nothing about it. You're shooting arrows into the air."

"Tell me more then. Hold up a torch in the darkness."

"I can't. You pretend to know a woman, and you ask her coldly to explain to you the attraction of the man she loves, to dissect it. I won't try to."

"But," he said, with now a sort of joking persistence, which was only a mask for an almost irritable curiosity, "I want to know."

"And you shall. Maurice and I are dining to-night at Caminiti's in Peathill Street, just off Regent Street. Come and meet us there, and we'll all three spend the evening together. Half-past eight, of course no evening dress, and the most delicious Turkish coffee in London."

"Does Monsieur Delarey like Turkish coffee?"

"Loves it."

"Intelligently?"

"How do you mean?"

"Does he love it inherently, or because you do?"

"You can find that out to-night."

"I shall come."

He got up, put his pipe into a case, and the case into his pocket, and said:

"Hermione, if the analyst may have a word—"

"Yes—now."

"Don't let Monsieur Delarey, whatever his character, see now, or in the future, the dirty little beggar staring at the angel. I use your own preposterously inflated phrase. Men can't stand certain things and remain true to the good in their characters. Humble adoration from a woman like you would be destructive of blessed virtues in Antinous. Think well of yourself, my friend, think well of your sphinxlike eyes. Haven't they beauty? Doesn't intellect shoot its fires from them? Mon Dieu! Don't let me see any prostration to-night, or I shall put three grains of something I know—I always call it Turkish delight—into the Turkish coffee of Monsieur Delarey, and send him to sleep with his fathers."

Hermione got up and held out her hands to him impulsively.

"Bless you, Emile!" she said. "You're a—"

There was a gentle tap on the door. Hermione went to it and opened it. Selim stood outside with a pencil note on a salver.

"Ha! The little Townly has been!" said Artois.

"Yes, it's from her. You told her, Selim, that I was with Monsieur Artois?"

"Yes, madame."

"Did she say anything?"

"She said, 'Very well,' madame, and then she wrote this. Then she said again, 'Very well,' and then she went away."

"All right, Selim."

Selim departed.

"Delicious!" said Artois. "I can hear her speaking and see her drifting away consumed by jealousy, in the fog."

"Hush, Emile, don't be so malicious."

"P'f! I must be to-day, for I too am—"

"Nonsense. Be good this evening, be very good."

"I will try."

He kissed her hand, bending his great form down with a slightly burlesque air, and strode out without another word. Hermione sat down to read Miss Townly's note:

Hermione laid the note down, with a sigh and a little laugh.

"I wonder what it all means? Poor, dear Evelyn! Thank God, it sometimes means—" She did not finish the sentence, but knelt down on the carpet and took the St. Bernard's great head in her hands.

"You don't bother, do you, old boy, as long as you have your bone. Ah, I'm a selfish wretch. But I am going to have my bone, and I can't help feeling happy—gloriously, supremely happy!"

And she kissed the dog's cold nose and repeated:

"Supremely—supremely happy!"

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