much stronger did she question him as to his antecedents. The
Archdeacon had gone away after a week's visit without being able to
hold any converse with Paul; Colonel Winwood was still at
Contrexeville, whence he wrote sceptically of the rare bird whom
Ursula had discovered; and Ursula was alone in the house, save for a
girl friend who had no traffic with the sick-chamber. She had,
therefore, much leisure to devote to Paul. Her brother's scepticism
most naturally strengthened her belief in him. He was her discovery.
He grew almost to be her invention. just consider. Here was a young
Greek god--everyone who had a bowing acquaintance with ancient
sculpture immediately likened Paul to a Greek god, and Ursula was
not so far different from her cultured fellow mortals as to liken
him to anything else--here was a young Phoebus Apollo, all the
more Olympian because of his freedom from earthly ties, fallen
straight from the clouds. He had fallen at her feet. His beauty had
stirred her. His starlike loneliness had touched her heart. His
swift intelligence, growing more manifest each day as he grew
stronger, moved her admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny
and sensuous nature, alive to beauty--even the beauty of the
trivial things in his sickroom. He had an odd, poetical trick of
phrase. He was a paragon of young Greek gods. She had discovered
him; and women don't discover even mortal paragons every day in the
week. Also, she was a woman of forty-three, which, after all, is not
wrinkled and withered eld; and she was not a soured woman; she
radiated health and sweetness; she had loved once in her life, very
dearly. Romance touched her with his golden feather and, in the most
sensible and the most unreprehensible way in the world, she fell in
love with Paul.

"I wonder what made you put that Santa Barbara of Palma Vecchio just