Not that his leading impression of her was in any way modified.

Incompetent and unpromising as an artist, delightful as a woman,--had been his earliest verdict upon her, and his conviction of its reasonableness had been only deepened by subsequent experience; but perhaps the sense of delightfulness was gaining upon the sense of incompetence?
After all, beauty and charm and sex have in all ages been too much for the clever people who try to reckon without them.

Kendal was far too shrewd not to recognise the very natural and reasonable character of the proceeding, and not to smile at the first sign of it in his own person.

Still, he meant to try, if he could, to keep the two estimates distinct, and neither to confuse himself nor other people by confounding them.

It seemed to him an intellectual point of honour to keep his head perfectly cool on the subject of Miss Bretherton's artistic claims, but he was conscious that it was not always very easy to do--a consciousness that made him sometimes all the more recalcitrant under the pressure of her celebrity.
For it seemed to him that in society he heard of nothing but her--her beauty, her fascination, and her success.