"I'm glad to know there are other ways."
"I shall be very obedient to the woman I love in several of those other ways," replied Ford, gathering some of the ripening grapes near the balcony rail.
Mrs. Winthrop went back into the faded drawing-room. "It is a pity there is no portrait here of Madame Récamier," she remarked. "That you might have admired."
"The 'incomparable Juliette' was at least not literary. But in another way she was as much before the public as though she had been what you call a woman of genius. It may be said, indeed, that she had genius—a genius for attracting admiration."
"You are hard to please."
"Not at all; I ask only the simple and retiring womanly graces. But anything retiring was hard to find in the eighteenth century."
"You dislike literary women very much," said Mrs. Winthrop. She had crossed the room to examine an old mirror made of squares of glass, welded together by little leaden frames, which had once been gilded.
"Hardly. I pity them."
"You did not know, then, that I was one?"
He had crossed the room also, and was now standing behind her; as she asked the question she looked at his image in the glass.