phrase that some Ariel had whispered to him as he walked or
sat.

"To hear that little rill of Paradise breaking out in the glaring
room, not echoed or reflected in the rows of listless faces, gives me
a strange turn. It sweeps away for a minute or two, as it goes and
comes and returns upon itself until its sweet course is run, all the
hard and stifling web of convention and opinion that closes us in; it
takes me back for a moment to old-world fancies, till I seem to feel,
as I am always longing to feel, that we are separated only by a very
little flimsy hedge from the secrets of the beautiful, from the
shadow-land which is so real; and that every now and then a breeze
breaks and stirs across, with something of the fragrance of the place
in its wandering air."

He used to come to me in my rooms in Newman Street, on his way back
from an evening party or a ball, to smoke a cigar, and it was very
interesting to watch his growing disgust for the life, and the
grotesque and humorous ways in which he expressed it.

"Do I feel flat?" he used to say--"it isn't the word--bored to death.
Why, my dear Chris, if you'd heard the conversation of the lady next
me to-night, you'd have thought that the premier said, every morning
when his shaving-water was brought him, 'Another day! Whose happiness
can I mar? Whose ruin can I effect? What villainy can I execute
to-day?'"

One night, at dinner, he happened to sit next a young lady in whom
the fashionable world were a good deal interested.

It is impossible to give a fair sketch of her character; she was what
would now be called unconventional, and was then called fast.

She openly avowed her preference for men's society as compared to
female--women, as a rule, did not like her--she used to receive calls
from her own men friends in her own room whenever she liked, and it
was considered rather "compromising" to know her.

She was perfectly reckless about what she said and did. I questioned
Arthur about her conversation, for she was accused of telling
improper stories. "I have often," he said, "heard her allude to
things and tell stories that would be considered unusual, even
indelicate. But I never heard her say a thing in which there could
be any conceivable 'taint,' in which the point consisted in the
violation of the decent sense. The 'doubtful' element was rare and
always incidental."

Arthur told me a delightful story about her. Her father was a testy
old country gentlem