t
you to understand that I cannot--that I do not hold with your
practice of making love to every woman you meet. In the first place
it is beastly, in the second it is not gentlemanly. Look at the
result!"

"But I assure you I am in no wise to blame in this affair. I never
was her lover."

"But you made love to her."

"No, I didn't; we talked of love, that was all. I could see she was
excited, and hardly knew what she was saying. You are most unjust. I
think it quite as horrible as you do; it preys upon my mind, and if I
talk of other things it is because I would save myself the pain of
thinking of it. Can't you understand that?"

The conversation fell, and Mike thrust both hands into the pockets of
his overcoat.

At the end of a long silence, Frank said--

"We must have an article on this--or, I don't know--I think I should
like a poem. Could you write a poem on her death?"

"I think so. A prose poem. I was penetrated with the modern
picturesqueness of the room--the Venetian blinds."

"If that's the way you are going to treat it, I would sooner not have
it--the face in the glass, a lot of repetitions of words, sentences
beginning with 'And,' then a mention of shoes and silk stockings. If
you can't write feelingly about her, you had better not write at
all."

"I don't see that a string of colloquialisms constitute feelings,"
said Mike.

Mike kept his temper; he did not intend to allow it to imperil his
residence in Temple Gardens, or his position in the newspaper; but he
couldn't control his vanity, and ostentatiously threw Lady Helen's
handkerchief upon the table, and admitted to having picked it up in
the hotel.

"What am I to do with it? I suppose I must keep it as a relic," he
added with a laugh, as he opened his wardrobe.

There were there ladies' shoes, scarves, and neckties; there were
there sachets and pincushions; there were there garters, necklaces,
cotillion favours, and a tea-gown.

Again Frank boiled over with indignation, and having vented his sense
of rectitude, he left the room without even bidding his friend
good-night or good-morning. The next day he spent the entire
afternoon with Lizzie, for Lady Helen's suicide had set his nature in
active ferment.

In the story of every soul there are times of dissolution and
reconstruction in which only the generic forms are preserved. A new
force had been introduced, and it was disintegrating that mass of
social fibre which is modern man, and