He always was an unconventional creature." Wetmore went away, but Beaton remained, and he outstayed several other people who came up to speak to Miss Vance.

She was interested in everybody, and she liked the talk of these clever literary, artistic, clerical, even theatrical people, and she liked the sort of court with which they recognized her fashion as well as her cleverness; it was very pleasant to be treated intellectually as if she were one of themselves, and socially as if she was not habitually the same, but a sort of guest in Bohemia, a distinguished stranger.

If it was Arcadia rather than Bohemia, still she felt her quality of distinguished stranger.

The flattery of it touched her fancy, and not her vanity; she had very little vanity.

Beaton's devotion made the same sort of appeal; it was not so much that she liked him as she liked being the object of his admiration.