most profound music gives only the timbre--melodies are for infantile
people without imagination, who believe in patterns. Tone is the quality
_I_ wish on a canvas, not anxious drawing. So it is with perfumes. I can
blend them into groups of lovely harmony; I can give you single notes of
delicious timbre--in a word, I can evoke an odour symphony which will
transport you. Memory is a supreme factor in this art. Do not forget how
the vaguest scent will carry you back to your youthful dreamland. It is
also the secret of spiritual correspondences--it plays the great role of
bridging space between human beings."

"I sniff the air promise-crammed," he gayly misquoted. "But when will
you rewrite this Apocalypse? and how am I to know whether I shall really
enjoy this feast of perfume, if you can simulate the odour of iris as
you did an hour ago?"

"I propose to show you an artificial paradise," she firmly asserted. In
the middle of the room there was a round table, the top inlaid with
agate. On it a large blue bowl stood, and it was empty. Mrs. Whistler
went to a swinging cabinet and took from it a dozen small phials. "Now
for the incantation," he jokingly said. In her matter-of-fact manner she
placed the bottles on the table, and uncorking them, she poured them
slowly into the bowl. He broke the silence:--

"Isn't there any special form of hair-raising invocation that goes with
this dangerous operation?"

"Listen to this." Her eyes swimming with fire, she intoned:--

As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points aglow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil's roll-call and some fete in Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.

He did not seem to hear. From out the bowl there was stealing a perfume
which overmastered his will and led him captive to the lugubrious glade
of the Druids....

III

THE CIRCUS OF CANDLES

Comme d'autres esprits voguent sur la musique,
Le mien, o mon amour! nage sur ton parfum.

--BAUDELAIRE.

He was not dreaming, for he saw the woman at the bowl, saw her
apartment. But the interior of his brain was as melancholy as a lighted
cathedral. A mortal sadness encompassed him, and his nerves were like
taut violin strings. It was within the walls o