She had sent away the man of whom she was in truth afraid--the man whom she might have loved.

But in this distant, hesitating, and yet strong devotion that Fenwick was beginning to show her, there was something that appealed--and with peculiar force, in the immediate circumstances,--to a very sore and lonely heart.

Here was no danger to be feared!--nothing but a little kind help to a man of genius, whose great gifts might be so easily nullified and undone by his thorny vehemence of character, his lack of breeding and education.
The correspondence indeed which had arisen between them out of Fenwick's first remarkable letter to her, had led unconsciously to a new attitude on the part of Madame de Pastourelles.

That he was an interesting and promising artist she knew; that on subjects connected with his art he could talk copiously and well, that also, she knew; but that he could write, with such pleasant life, detail, and ingenuity, was a surprise, and it attracted her, as it would have attracted a French-woman of the eighteenth century.

Her maimed life had made her perforce an 'intellectual'; and in these letters, the man's natural poetry and force stirred her enthusiasm.