unish me? Everyone of them tainted with
a sensuality which I loathe."

To call him out of this bitter way of regret I quoted Shakespeare's
sonnet:

"For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?"

"His complaint is exactly yours, Oscar."

"It's astonishing, Frank, how well you know him, and yet you deny his
intimacy with Pembroke. To you he is a living man; you always talk of
him as if he had just gone out of the room, and yet you persist in
believing in his innocence."

"You misapprehend me," I said, "the passion of his life was for Mary
Fitton, to give her a name; I mean the 'dark lady' of the sonnets, who
was Beatrice, Cressida and Cleopatra, and you yourself admit that a man
who has a mad passion for a woman is immune, I think the doctors call
it, to other influences."

"Oh, yes, Frank, of course; but how could Shakespeare with his beautiful
nature love a woman to that mad excess?"

"Shakespeare hadn't your overwhelming love of plastic beauty," I
replied; "he fell in love with a dominant personality, the complement of
his own yielding, amiable disposition."

"That's it," he broke in, "our opposites attract us irresistibly--the
charm of the unknown!"

"You often talk now," I went on, "as if you had never loved a woman; yet
you must have loved--more than one."

"My salad days, Frank," he quoted, smiling, "when I was green in
judgment, cold of blood."

"No, no," I persisted, "it is not a great while since you praised Lady
So and So and the Terrys enthusiastically."

"Lady ----," he began gravely (and I could not but notice that the mere
title seduced him to conventional, poetic language), "moves like a lily
in water; I always think of her as a lily; just as I used to think of
Lily Langtry as a tulip, with a figure like a Greek vase carved in
ivory. But I always adored the Terrys: Marion is a great actress with
subtle charm and enigmatic fascination: she was my 'Woman of no
importance,' artificial and enthralling; she belongs to my theatre--"

As he seemed to have lost the thread, I questioned again.

"And Ellen?"

"Oh, Ellen's a perfect wonder," he broke out, "a great character. Do you
know her history?" And then, without waiting for an answer, he
continued:

"She began as a model for Watts, the painter, when she was only some
fifteen or sixteen year