ising novelty.

'Upstairs or down, sir? Perhaps you'd prefer the balcony? For two, sir?
I'll _see_, sir. We're always rather full. What name, sir?'

'Knight,' said Henry majestically.

He was a bad starter, but once started he could travel fast. Already he
was beginning to feel at home in the princely foyer of the Louvre, and
to stare at new arrivals with a cold and supercilious stare. His
complacency, however, was roughly disturbed by a sudden alarm lest
Geraldine might not come in evening-dress, might not have quite
appreciated what the Louvre was.

'Table No. 16, sir,' said the chain-wearer in his ear, as if depositing
with him a state-secret.

'Right,' said Henry, and at the same instant she irradiated the hall
like a vision.

'Am I not prompt?' she demanded sweetly, as she took a light wrap from
her shoulders.

Henry began to talk very rapidly and rather loudly. 'I thought you'd
prefer the balcony,' he said with a tremendous air of the man about
town; 'so I got a table upstairs. No. 16, I fancy it is.'

She was in evening-dress. There could be no doubt about that; it was a
point upon which opinions could not possibly conflict. She was in
evening-dress.

'Now tell me all about _your_self,' Henry suggested. They were in the
middle of the dinner.

'Oh, you can't be interested in the affairs of poor little me!'

'Can't I!'

He had never been so ecstatically happy in his life before. In fact, he
had not hitherto suspected even the possibility of that rapture. In the
first place, he perceived that in choosing the Louvre he had builded
better than he knew. He saw that the Louvre was perfect. Such napery,
such argent, such crystal, such porcelain, such flowers, such electric
and glowing splendour, such food and so many kinds of it, such men, such
women, such chattering gaiety, such a conspiracy on the part of menials
to persuade him that he was the Shah of Persia, and Geraldine the
peerless Circassian odalisque! The reality left his fancy far behind. In
the second place, owing to his prudence in looking up the subject in
_Chambers' Encyclopaedia_ earlier in the day, he, who was almost a
teetotaler, had cut a more than tolerable figure in handling the
wine-list. He had gathered that champagne was in truth scarcely worthy
of its reputation among the uninitiated, that the greatest of all wines
was burgundy, and that the greatest of all burgundies was Romanee-Conti.
'Got a good Romanee-Conti?' he said casuall