On Sunday he took his guests to service in an unfinished cathedral, so that Ellen might comprehend mediæval deliberation and understand how Chartres and Amiens were built—he expected to show her Chartres and Amiens—and in the afternoon he took her alone to hear a Russian pianist. She sat quietly and for a while he forgot even her. When he turned toward her at the end of a number, she was looking at him.
"This is best of all," said she, to his supreme content.
They walked down Fifth Avenue in the late sunshine. It seemed to Ellen that every one was happy, but none so happy as she.
"But it seems wicked!" she declared suddenly.
"What seems wicked?"
"To be so happy and so gay."
Stephen recognized a lingering impression of early teachings. None of that, he was determined, should be left in Ellen! He needed no narrow creed, either for himself or for her.
"That is nonsense. That feeling is wicked!"
Then Ellen asked a question which was prompted by a hunger to share his interests, and which might have been invented by the deliberate and cunning art of a much older woman.
"You said you were going to talk to a young surgeon yesterday morning. Did you?"