y or the sound of a woman's
oath; and yet--and yet he could not rid himself of the idea that there
was something palpitating, wicked, spicy, about a shop-girl who held up
her skirt to cross a muddy road. There was a thrill for him each time
that he passed a stage-door. Garters--champagne (always known as
fizz)--corsets--chorus girls--these all held for him a brimming measure
of romance. He was convinced that there was something specially
cryptic and alluring about bar-maids, though he would never enter bars
as he did not like other people's glasses. Paris to him stood for a
riot of continued orgies shaming a white dawn. He was of those who for
peculiar reasons can thoroughly enjoy a really English ballet. The
thought of studios and models had half consciously affected the choice
of his career; and if he now knew that to be illusion, so far as his
experiences went, he still liked--well, one half of him--to read the
old exciting fairy-tales. Perhaps they happened somewhere, still.

At times, when he was on a holiday or anywhere except at his own
news-shop, he would buy, half-ashamed and furtive, those strange,
elemental papers whose main task it is to tickle the broad tastes of
City youths or Army officers. And he thoroughly enjoyed them--until
afterwards.

Army men, in fact, who had glared at him all through a long
dinner-party, often revised their estimate when coffee had come in and
their wives departed; if, be it understood, the conversation drifted
into a right channel. On the way home, should their wives say; "I
liked that Mr. Alison, so clever!" they would reply: "M'yes? Rather an
affected ass, my dear: I can't stand those artistic johnnies. Still,
he came out a bit over the wine and showed he _had_ got something in
him. Not a bad fellow I dare say; bit of a sportsman possibly--in
spite of his long hair. But I'm not sure we want to have him calling?"
Which only shows how useful it may be for any man to have two sides.
You never can please all the world with one!

Of course the one in question was entirely abstract. Geoffrey Alison
would never have even dreamt of doing all the things he liked to read
on paper. It would perhaps have been more healthy if he had; but no,
he realised, himself, that it was only an idea.

It was an idea, too, that he shared with no one. His friends--artists
and authors--somehow were not amused by anything of that sort, although
the papers he enjoyed were read by millio