in the personality of that
young Roman noble whose name you have made so famous, and from another
age were gazing tolerantly and even kindly upon the folly and the
pageantry which have survived for two thousand years. And then I have
taken my little place in the procession, and I have fancied that a
subtle change has stolen into your face. You have looked at me as
gravely as ever, but no longer as an impersonal spectator.

"It is as though I have seemed a live person to you, and the others,
mummies. Once the change came so swiftly that I smiled at you,--I
could not help it,--and you looked away."

"I remember it distinctly," he interrupted. "I thought the smile was
for some one behind me."

She shook her head.

"It was for you. Now I have finished. Fill in the blanks, please."

He was content to answer her in the same strain. The effect of her
complete naturalness was already upon him.

"So far as my personal history is concerned," he told her, "you are
wonderfully correct. There is nothing more to be said about it. I gave
up my fellowship at Oxford because I have always been convinced of the
increasing narrowness and limitations of purely academic culture and
scholarship. I was afraid of what I should become as an old man, of
what I was already growing into. I wanted to have a closer grip upon
human things, to be in more sympathetic relations with the great world
of my fellow-men. Can you understand me, I wonder? The influences of
a university town are too purely scholarly to produce literary work of
wide human interest. London had always fascinated me--though as yet I
have met with many disappointments. As to the _Bi-Weekly_, it was my
first idea to undertake no fixed literary work, and it was only after
great pressure that I took it for a time. As you know, my editorship
was a failure."

He paused for a moment or two, and looked steadily at her. He was
anxious to watch the effect of what he was going to say.

"You have mentioned my review upon your novel in the _Bi-Weekly_. I
cannot say that I am sorry I wrote it. I never attacked a book with so
much pleasure. But I am very sorry indeed that you should have written
it. With your gifts you could have given to the world something better
than a mere psychological debauch!"

She laughed softly, but genuinely.

"I adore sincerity," she exclaimed, "and it is so many years since I
was actually scolded. A 'psychological debauch' is delightful. But I
cannot help