usly. She had an
immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red hair? Yellow hair? Red hair
with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow hair with red fires shimmering
through it? In a single loose, full billow it swept away from her
forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling,
capricious undulations. And her skin had the sensitive colouring, the
fineness of texture, that are apt to accompany red hair when it's
yellow, yellow hair when it's red. Her face, with its pensive,
quizzical eyes, its tip-tilted nose, its rather large mouth, and the
little mocking quirks and curves the lips took, with an alert, arch,
witty face; a delicate high-bred face; and withal a somewhat sensuous,
emotional face; the face of a woman with a vast deal of humour in her
soul; a vast deal of mischief; of a woman who would love to tease you,
and mystify you, and lead you on, and put you off; and yet who, in her
own way, at her own time, would know supremely well how to be kind.

But it was mischief rather than kindness that glimmered in her eyes at
present, as she asked, "You were in the deepest depths of dejection?
Poor man! Why?"

"I can't precisely determine," said he, "whether the sympathy that seems
to vibrate in your voice is genuine or counterfeit."

"Perhaps it's half and half," she suggested. "But my curiosity is
unmixed. Tell me your troubles."

"The catalogue is long. I've sixteen hundred million. The weather, for
example. The shameless beauty of this radiant spring day. It's enough to
stir all manner of wild pangs and longings in the heart of an
octogenarian. But, anyhow, when one's life is passed in a dungeon, one
can't perpetually be singing and dancing from mere exuberance of joy,
can one?"

"Is your life passed in a dungeon?" she exclaimed.

"Indeed, indeed, it is. Isn't yours?"

"It had never occurred to me that it was."

"You're lucky. Mine is passed in the dungeons of Castle Ennui," he said.

"Oh, Castle Ennui. Ah, yes. You mean you're bored?"

"At this particular moment I'm savouring the most exquisite excitement,"
he professed. "But in general, when I am not working or sleeping, I'm
bored to extermination--incomparably bored. If only one could work and
sleep alternately, twenty-four hours a day, the year round! There's no
use trying to play in London. It's so hard to find a playmate. The
English people take their pleasures without salt."

"The dungeons of Castle Ennui," she repeated meditatively.