ive, a
harp waiting to catch the winds, a pool ready to be ruffled, not a
bustling busybody, forever trotting about on the pavement looking for a
new bun shop. It should not deliberately run to seek sensations, but it
should never avoid one; it should never be afraid of one; it should
never put one aside from an absurd sense of right and wrong. Every
sensation is valuable. Sensations are the details that build up the
stories of our lives."

"But if we do not choose our sensations carefully, the stories may be
sad, may even end tragically," said Lady Locke.

"Oh! I don't think that matters at all; do you, Mrs. Windsor?" said
Reggie. "If we choose carefully, we become deliberate at once; and
nothing is so fatal to personality as deliberation. When I am good, it
is my mood to be good; when I am what is called wicked, it is my mood to
be evil. I never know what I shall be at a particular moment. Sometimes
I like to sit at home after dinner and read 'The dream of Gerontius.' I
love lentils and cold water. At other times I must drink absinthe, and
hang the night hours with scarlet embroideries. I must have music, and
the sins that march to music. There are moments when I desire squalor,
sinister, mean surroundings, dreariness, and misery. The great unwashed
mood is upon me. Then I go out from luxury. The mind has its West End
and its Whitechapel. The thoughts sit in the Park sometimes, but
sometimes they go slumming. They enter narrow courts and rookeries. They
rest in unimaginable dens seeking contrast, and they like the ruffians
whom they meet there, and they hate the notion of policemen keeping
order. The mind governs the body. I never know how I shall spend an
evening till the evening has come. I wait for my mood."

Lady Locke looked at him quite gravely while he was speaking. He always
talked with great vivacity, and as if he meant what he was saying. She
wondered if he did mean it. Like most other people, she felt the charm
that always emanated from him. His face was tired and white, but not
wicked, and there was an almost girlish beauty about it. He flushed
easily, and was obviously sensitive to impressions. As he spoke now, he
seemed to be elucidating some fantastic gospel, giving forth some
whimsical revelation; yet she felt that he was talking the most
dangerous nonsense, and she rather wanted to say so. Most of her life
had been passed among soldiers. Her father had been a general in the
Artillery. Her two broth