OUT OF ACTION Now if, upon a warm, soft, summer evening, you were suddenly asked to describe the perfect winter's day, either you would have to stop and think a little, or your imagination is more elastic than mine.

Yet you might have a passionate preference for cold sun and bracing airs.

To me, Catherine Evers and this Mrs.Lascelles were as opposite to each other as winter and summer, or the poles, or any other notorious antitheses.
There was no comparison between them in my mind, yet as I sat with one among the sunlit, unfamiliar Alps, it was a distinct effort to picture the other in the little London room I knew so well.

For it was always among her books and pictures that I thought of Catherine, and to think was to wish myself there at her side, rather than to wish her here at mine.

Catherine's appeal, I used to think, was to the highest and the best in me, to brain and soul, and young ambition, and withal to one's love of wit and sense of humour.