figure, and Marie's exquisite gracefulness. She was Lefevre's Chloe; so
every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. She invited her friends
to dinner, and with the few pence that remained she bought some boxes of
matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No one knew why; some said it
was love.

I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large trousers
and a Capoul beard; and I looked, I believe, as unlike an Englishman as a
drawing by Grevin. In the smoking-room of Morley's Hotel I met my agent, an
immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He explained,
after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and that the
accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a solicitor to
have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to contest them. I
did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, and so the matter
ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. The years the most
impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the senses and the mind are the
widest awake, I, the most impressionable of human beings, had spent in
France, not among English residents, but among that which is the
quintessence of the nation; I, not an indifferent spectator, but an
enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify himself with his
environment, to shake himself free from race and language and to recreate
himself as it were in the womb of a new nationality, assuming its ideals,
its morals, and its modes of thought, and I had succeeded strangely well,
and when I returned home England was a new country to me; I had, as it
were, forgotten everything. Every aspect of street and suburban garden was
new to me; of the manner of life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds
incredible, but it is so; I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a
drawing-room, but everything seemed far away--a dream, a presentment,
nothing more; I was in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of
those I met I could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them:
an Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an
Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will take
this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that any one
else has observed that the difference between the two races is found in the
men, not in the women. French and English women are psychologically very
similar; the standpoint from which they, see life is t