'I think he'll be astounded,' I said, reserving the rest, and she
cried in her pleasure, 'Oh, you dear man!'

'I see you have taken possession of him,' I went on.

'Ah, body and soul,' Dora rejoined, and it must have been something
like that. I could imagine how she did it; with what wiles of
simplicity and candid good-fellowship she had drawn him to
forgetfulness and response, and how presently his enthusiasm leaped
up to answer hers and they had been caught altogether out of the
plane of common relations, and he had gone away on that disgraceful
bazaar pony with a ratified arrangement to return next day which had
been almost taken for granted from the beginning.

I confess, though I had helped to bring it about, the situation
didn't altogether please me. I did not dream of foolish dangers,
but it seemed to take a little too much for granted; I found myself
inwardly demanding whether, after all, a vivid capacity to make
colour conscious was a sufficient basis on which to bring to Edward
Harris's house a young man about whom we knew nothing whatever else.
An instant's regard showed the scruple fraudulent, it fled before
the rush of pleasure with which I gazed at the tokens he had left
behind him. I fell back on my wonder, which was great, that Dora
should have possessed the technique necessary to take him at a point
where he could give her so much that was valuable.

'Oh, well,' she said when I uttered it, 'you know I made the
experiment! I found out in South Kensington--you can learn that
much there--that I never would be able to paint well enough to make