many-sided mind that he had perhaps failed to seize--

"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not wish
you, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would imply."


II

She stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers was with her daily. She
showed an unaffected pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously
founded on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young man could
enjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he was merely one more grain of
frankincense on the altar of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a more
personal note crept into their intercourse. If she still liked him only
because he appreciated Rendle, she at least perceptibly distinguished him
from the herd of Rendle's appreciators.

Her attitude toward the great man's memory struck Danyers as perfect. She
neither proclaimed nor disavowed her identity. She was frankly Silvia to
those who knew and cared; but there was no trace of the Egeria in her
pose. She spoke often of Rendle's books, but seldom of himself; there was
no posthumous conjugality, no use of the possessive tense, in her
abounding reminiscences. Of the master's intellectual life, of his habits
of thought and work, she never wearied of talking. She knew the history of
each poem; by what scene or episode each image had been evoked; how many
times the words in a certain line had been transposed; how long a certain
adjective had been sought, and what had at last suggested it; she could
even explain that one impenetrable line, the torment of critics, the joy
of detractors, the last line of _The Old Odysseus_.