g of that, because you have told me so yourself. Perhaps you
intend to have a platform erected in our front parlour, where I can
address you every evening, and put you to sleep after your work. I say
our _front_ parlour, as if it were certain we should have two! It
doesn't look as if our means would permit that--and we must have some
place to dine, if there is to be a platform in our sitting-room."

"My dear young woman, it will be easy to solve the difficulty: the
dining-table itself shall be our platform, and you shall mount on top of
that." This was Basil Ransom's sportive reply to his companion's very
natural appeal for light, and the reader will remark that if it led her
to push her investigation no further, she was very easily satisfied.
There was more reason, however, as well as more appreciation of a very
considerable mystery, in what he went on to say. "Charming to me,
charming to all the world? What will become of your charm?--is that what
you want to know? It will be about five thousand times greater than it
is now; that's what will become of it. We shall find plenty of room for
your facility; it will lubricate our whole existence. Believe me, Miss
Tarrant, these things will take care of themselves. You won't sing in
the Music Hall, but you will sing to me; you will sing to every one who
knows you and approaches you. Your gift is indestructible; don't talk as
if I either wanted to wipe it out or should be able to make it a
particle less divine. I want to give it another direction, certainly;
but I don't want to stop your activity. Your gift is the gift of
expression, and there is nothing I can do for you that will make you
less expressive. It won't gush out at a fixed hour and on a fixed day,
but it will irrigate, it will fertilise, it will brilliantly adorn your
conversation. Think how delightful it will be when your influence
becomes really social. Your facility, as you call it, will simply make
you, in conversation, the most charming woman in America."

It is to be feared, indeed, that Verena was easily satisfied (convinced,
I mean, not that she ought to succumb to him, but that there were
lovely, neglected, almost unsuspected truths on his side); and there is
further evidence on the same head in the fact that after the first once
or twice she found nothing to say to him (much as she was always saying
to herself) about the cruel effect her apostasy would have upon Olive.
She forbore to plead that reason af