mature--he resumed his seat and continued to
write his letters.

These finished, he stamped them, rang for Aristocrates, picked up his
palette and brushes, and pulled out the easel upon which was the
canvas for the morning.

Dulcie, still in the hands of Selinda, had not yet emerged. The
Prophet sat upright on the carved table, motionless as a cat of ebony
with green-jewelled eyes.

"Well, old sport," said Barres, stepping across the rug to caress the
cat, "you and your pretty mistress begin to look very interesting on
my canvas."

The Prophet received the blandishments with dignified gratitude. A
discreet and feathery purring filled the room as Barres stroked the
jet black, silky fur.

"Fine cat, you are," commented the young man, turning as Dulcie
entered.

She laid one hand on his extended arm and sprang lightly to the model
stand. And the next moment she was seated--a slim, gemmed thing
glimmering with imperial jade from top to toe.

Barres laid the Prophet in her arms, stepped back while Dulcie
arranged the docile cat, then retreated to his canvas.

"All right, Sweetness?"

"All right," replied the child happily. And the morning seance was
on.

Barres was usually inclined to ramble along conversationally in his
pleasant, detached way while at work, particularly if work went well.

"Where were we yesterday, Dulcie? Oh, yes; we were talking about the
Victorian era and its art; and we decided that it was not the barren
desert that the ultra-moderns would have us believe. That's what we
decided, wasn't it?"

"_You_ decided," she said.

"So did you, Dulcie. It was a unanimous decision. Because we both
concluded that some among the Victorians were full of that sweet,
clean sanity which alone endures. You recollect how our decision
started?"

"Yes. It was about my new pleasure in Tennyson, Browning, Morris,
Arnold, and Swinburne."

"Exactly. Victorian poets, if sometimes a trifle stilted and
self-conscious, wrote nobly; makers of Victorian prose displayed
qualities of breadth, imagination and vision and a technical
cultivation unsurpassed. The musical compositions of that epoch were
melodious and sometimes truly inspired; never brutal, never vulgar,
never degenerate. And the Victorian sculptors and painters--at first
perhaps austerely pedantic--became, as they should be, recorders of
the times and customs of thought, bringing the end of the reign of a
great Queen to an admirable renaissance."

Du