remembrance of her smile; I even remember thinking that some men might
have cut the knot by marrying her, but I handed over Plato as a hostage
and escaped by the afternoon train.

The next time I saw her was in New York, when she had become so
fashionable that it was a part of the whole duty of woman to be seen at
her lectures. The lady who suggested that of course I ought to go and hear
Mrs. Amyot, was not very clear about anything except that she was
perfectly lovely, and had had a horrid husband, and was doing it to
support her boy. The subject of the discourse (I think it was on Ruskin)
was clearly of minor importance, not only to my friend, but to the throng
of well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled in late, dropped
their muffs and pocket-books, and undisguisedly lost themselves in the
study of each other's apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with warmth, but
she evidently represented a social obligation like going to church, rather
than any more personal interest; in fact, I suspect that every one of the
ladies would have remained away, had they been sure that none of the
others were coming.

Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack of sympathy between
herself and her hearers, or whether the sport of arousing it had become a
task, she certainly imparted her platitudes with less convincing warmth
than of old. Her voice had the same confidential inflections, but it was
like a voice reproduced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed far away.
She had grown stouter without losing her dewy freshness, and her smart
gown might have been taken to show either the potentialities of a settled
income, or a politic concession to the taste of her hearers. As I listened
I reproached myself for ever having suspected her of self-deception in
saying that she took no pleasure in her work. I was sure now that she did
it only for Lancelot, and judging from the size of her audience and the