bout."

"You know what tune that is? That's the 'Wedding March.'"

"Who's going to be married? Not you."

"I don't know so much about that. At all events I am in love. The
sensation is delicious--like an ice or a glass of Chartreuse. Real
love--all the others were coarse passions--I feel it here, the
genuine article. You would not believe that I could fall in love."

"Listen to me," said Lizzie. "You wouldn't talk like that if you were
in love."

"I always talk; it relieves me. You have no idea how nice she is; so
frail, so white--a white blonde, a Seraphita. But you haven't read
Balzac; you do not know those white women of the North. '_Plus
blanche que la blanche hermine_,' etc. So pure is she that I cannot
think of kissing her without sensations of sacrilege. My lips are not
pure enough for hers. I would I were chaste. I never was chaste."

Mike laughed and chattered of everything. Words came from him like
flour from a mill.

The _Pilgrim_ was published on Wednesday. Wednesday was the day,
therefore, for walking in the Park; for lunching out; for driving in
hansoms. Like a fish on the crest of a wave he surveyed
London--multitudinous London, circulating about him; and he smiled
with pleasure when he caught sight of trees spreading their summer
green upon the curling whiteness of the clouds. He loved the Park.
The Park had always been his friend; it had given him society when no
door was open to him; it had been the inspiration of all his
ambitions; it was the Park that had first showed him ladies and
gentlemen in all the gaud and charm of town leisure. There he had
seen for the first time the panorama of slanting sunshades, patent
leather shoes, horses cantering in the dusty sunlight, or proudly
grouped, the riders flicking the flies away with gold-headed whips.
He loved the androgynous attire of the horsewomen--collars, silk
hats, and cravats. The Park appealed to him intensely and strangely
as nothing else did. He loved the Park for the great pasture it
afforded to his vanity. It was in the Park he saw the fashionable
procuress driving--she who would not allow him to pay even for
champagne in her house; it was in the Park he met the little actress
who looked so beseechingly in his face; it was in the Park he met
fashionable ladies who asked him to dinner and took him to the
theatre; it was in the Park he had found life and fortune, and,
saturated with happiness, with health, tingling with consciousness of