men can rarely distinguish the boundary between freedom and license.
Honestly I should like to revise the position of woman in Europe and
America before I entrusted _The Key_ to her keeping. Unmarried, she has
quite enough freedom, married she has too much."

"Therefore she conceals her age and dyes her hair."

"Showing that she is not invulnerable to flattery."

"No woman is, and flattery may be likened to the artillery preparation
which precedes a serious advance. But, my dear Mario, to deprive a woman
of admiration is to deprive a fish of water. In London when a woman
ceases to interest other men she ceases to interest her husband, unless
he is not as other men. In Stambul on the contrary the odalisque who
bathes in rival glances finally bathes in the Bosphorus with her
charming head in a sack. Fortunately we are at war with Turkey."

"Have you considered, Thessaly, what appalling sins must have been
committed by the present generation of women in some past phase of
existence?"

"There are instances in which the sins belong to the present phase. But
I agree with you that the women are suffering more than the men.
Therefore their past errors must have been greater. They are being
taught the value of love, Mario. In their next incarnation they will
remember. They will be reborn beneath a new star--_your_ star. Something
perturbs you. You are harassed by doubts and hunted by misgivings. I
have secured permission to toil up hundreds of stairs in order that I
may emulate the priests of Bel and look out upon the roofs of Babylon.
This spectacle will cheer you. Join me, my friend, and I will show you
the heart of the world."

IX

"Look," said Jules Thessaly, "below you stretches the Capital of the
greatest empire man has ever known."

They stood in the topmost gallery of the campanile looking down upon a
miniature London. The viridescent ribbon of the Thames bound bridge to
bridge running thematically through a symphony of grey and green and
gold. A consciousness of power leapt high within Paul. Only the sun was
above him, the sun and the suave immensity of space. How insignificant
an episode was a human life, how futile and inept; a tiny note in a
monstrous score. Below in the teeming streets moved a million such
points, each one but a single note in this vast orchestration, a bird
note, faint, inaudible 'mid the music of the spheres. Yet each to each
was the centre of the Universe; all symbolised the triumph to