a thousand times more delightful than he had dreamed--though,
as you know, he had dreamed a good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres
turned out to be the feeblest, faintest echo of her."

The Duchessa meditated for an instant.

"It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a
disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion," she said, at
last.

"It seems so, indeed," assented Peter; "but disenchantment,
there was none. She was all that he had imagined, and
infinitely more. She was the substance--he had imagined the
shadow. He had divined her, as it were, from a single angle,
and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale reflection of
one side of her--a pencil-sketch in profile."

The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.

"You pile wonder upon wonder," she said. "That the reality
should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers
which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of
distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close
inspection! It's dead against the accepted theory of things.
And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable Pauline!
You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she
read his book?"

"Nothing happened," said Peter. "I warned you that it was a
drama without action. A good deal happened, no doubt, in