t to others--to another at least. You
appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"

"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking
about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should
think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should
be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."

"Quite my idea--I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of
the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could
count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"

"The man you talked to just now?"

"Yes, Mellifont--a very good fellow, though a little too fond of
talking--I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But
a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now
alive. He is a composer--you must hear him play some bits from his
opera. He is at work on an opera, you know--or perhaps you have not
heard?"

"I have not heard--no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I
fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain
awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all,
a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do
such things.

"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will
sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are
all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner--all
wrong except Mellifont."

Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great
man.

"What is his opera to be called?" he asked, not venturing to hazard any
compromising observation.

"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' It is to be in seven acts, and each act is to
give an entirely new illustration of a deadly sin--which Mellifont will
show to be the only true virtues of mankind. It will make a revolution,
I can tell you."

Victor thought it could hardly fail to do that if it were at all
successful in the object set out by its author.

"It is to have seven heroines," the poet went on, still at the door,
and refusing to allow Victor to depart. "Lot's daughters--let me
see--Messalina, Locusta; Jezebel I think, Theodora, and I believe, Mrs.
Brownrigg. It will be a splendid thing."

It was not easy for Victor to get away, for the poet had to tell him of
other great works of art that were in the contemplation of members of
the school. At length Blanchet released him, thanking him gr