natural bar to your doing so--you 're a presentable man she's
what they call a lady--you're both, more or less, of the same
monde. Yet there 's positively no way known by which you can
contrive it--unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just
happens to drop a common acquaintance between you, at the right
time and place. Chance, in Wildmay's case, happened to drop
all the common acquaintances they may possibly have had at a
deplorable distance. He was alone on each of the occasions
when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to introduce
him; there was no one he could apply to for information
concerning her. He could n't very well follow her carriage
through the streets--dog her to her lair, like a detective.
Well--what then?"

The Duchessa was playing with her fan again.

"No," she agreed; "I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems
rather hard on the poor man--rather baffling and tantalising."

"The poor man thought it so, to be sure," said Peter; "he
fretted and fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks.
Here, there, now, anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision
of her--then she would vanish into the deep inane. So, in the
end--he had to take it out in something--he took it out in
writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of
her on his desk before him, and translated it into the
character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long
delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of
metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice--but now
he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her