insensibility to Allan Wayworth's literary form. He had a literary
form, or he thought he had, and her intelligent recognition of the
circumstance was the sweetest consolation Mrs. Alsager could have
administered. She was even more literary and more artistic than he,
inasmuch as he could often work off his overflow (this was his
occupation, his profession), while the generous woman, abounding in
happy thoughts, but unedited and unpublished, stood there in the
rising tide like the nymph of a fountain in the plash of the marble
basin.

The year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next
her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour
into a feast of reason. There was no motive for her asking him to
come to see her but that she liked him, which it was the more
agreeable to him to perceive as he perceived at the same time that
she was exquisite. She was enviably free to act upon her likings,
and it made Wayworth feel less unsuccessful to infer that for the
moment he happened to be one of them. He kept the revelation to
himself, and indeed there was nothing to turn his head in the
kindness of a kind woman. Mrs. Alsager occupied so completely the
ground of possession that she would have been condemned to inaction
had it not been for the principle of giving. Her husband, who was
twenty years her senior, a massive personality in the City and a
heavy one at home (wherever he stood, or even sat, he was
monumental), owned half a big newspaper and the whole of a great many
other things. He admired his wife, though she bore no children, and
liked her to have other tastes than his, as that seemed to give a
greater acreage to their life. His own appetites went so far he
could scarcely see the boundary, and his theory was to trust her to
push the limits of hers, so that between them the pair should astound