ow, as I sat down to write this lecture, memory evoked a scene and with
the scene a chance word of boyish slang, both of which may seem to you
irrelevant until, or unless, I can make you feel how they hold for me the
heart of the matter.

I once happened to be standing in a corner of a ball-room when there
entered the most beautiful girl these eyes have ever seen or now--since
they grow dull--ever will see. It was, I believe, her first ball, and by
some freak or in some premonition she wore black: and not pearls--which,
I am told, maidens are wont to wear on these occasions--but one crescent
of diamonds in her black hair. _Et vera incessu patuit dea._ Here, I say,
was absolute beauty. It startled.

I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes, beauty passes....

She died a year or two later. She may have been too beautiful to live
long. I have a thought that she may also have been too good.

For I saw her with the crowd about her: I saw led up and presented among
others the man who was to be, for a few months, her husband: and then, as
the men bowed, pencilling on their programmes, over their shoulders I saw
her eyes travel to an awkward young naval cadet (Do you remember Crossjay
in Meredith's "The Egoist"? It was just such a boy) who sat abashed and
glowering sulkily beside me on the far bench. Promptly with a laugh, she
advanced, claimed him, and swept him off into the first waltz.

When it was over he came back, a trifle flushed, and I felicitated him;
my remark (which I forget) being no doubt 'just the sort of banality, you
know, one does come out with'--as maybe that the British Navy kept its
old knack of cutting out. But he looked at me almost in tears and
blurted, 'It isn't her beauty, sir. You saw? It's--it's--my God, it's the
_style_!'

Now you may think that a somewhat cheap, or at any rate inadequate, cry
of the heart in my young seaman; as you may think it inadequate in me,
and moreover a trifle capricious, to assure you (as I do) that the first
and last secret of a good Style consists in thinking with the heart as
well as with the head.

But let us philosophise a little. You have been told, I daresay often
enough, that the business of writing demands _two_--the author and the
reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of
courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the seance, and
commonly charges for it. Wh