only thing that sustains me is
curiosity."

"I don't speak of love, but have you no affection for your
friends?--you like me, for instance."

"I am interested in you--you rouse my curiosity; but when I know you,
I shall pass you by just like another."

"You are frank, to say the least of it. But like all other women, I
suppose you like pleasure, and I adore you; I really do. I have never
seen any one like you. You are superb to-night; let me kiss you." He
took her in his arms.

"No, no; loose me. You do not love me, I do not love you; this is
merely vice."

He pleaded she was mistaken. They spoke of indifferent things, and
soon after went in to supper.

"What a beautiful piece of tapestry!" said Lady Helen.

"Yes, isn't it. But how strange!" he said, stopping in the doorway.
"See how exquisitely real is the unreal--that is to say, how full of
idea, how suggestive! Those blue trees and green skies, those nymphs
like unswathed mummies, colourless but for the red worsted of their
lips,--that one leaning on her bow, pointing to the stag that the
hunters are pursuing through a mysterious yellow forest,--are to my
mind infinitely more real than the women bending over their plates.
At this moment the real is mean and trivial, the ideal is full of
evocation."

"The real and the ideal; why distinguish as people usually
distinguish between the words? The real is but the shadow of the
ideal, the ideal but the shadow of the real."

The table was in disorder of cut pineapple, scattered dishes, and
drooping flowers. Muchross, Snowdown, Dicky the driver, and others
were grouped about the end of the table, and a waiter who styled them
"most amusing gentlemen," supplied fresh bottles of champagne.
Muchross had made several speeches, and now jumping on a chair, he
discoursed on the tapestry, drawing outrageous parallels, and talking
unexpected nonsense. The castle he identified as the cottage where he
and Jenny had spent the summer; the bleary-eyed old peacock was the
chicken he had dosed with cayenne pepper, hoping to cure its
rheumatism; the pool with the white threads for sunlight was the
water-butt into which Tom had fallen from the tiles--"those are the
hairs out of his own old tail." The nymphs were Laura, Maggie, Emily,
&c. Mike asked Lady Helen to come into the dancing-room, but she did
not appear to hear, and her laughter encouraged Muchross to further
excesses. The riot had reached its height and dancers were begin