the morning after
Scoutbush's visit to the Mellots, would have said that, if the cause
was love, the love was all on one side.

She was standing by the fireplace in a splendid pose, her arm resting
on the chimney-piece, the book from which she had been reciting in one
hand, the other playing in her black curls, as her eyes glanced back
ever and anon at her own profile in the mirror. Stangrave was half
sitting in a low chair by her side, half kneeling on the footstool
before her, looking up beseechingly, as she looked down tyrannically.

"Stupid, this reciting? Of course it is! I want realities, not shams;
life, not the stage; nature, not art."

"Throw away the book, then, and words, and art, and live!"

She knew well what he meant; but she answered as if she had
misunderstood him.

"Thanks, I live already, and in good company enough. My ghost-husbands
are as noble as they are obedient; do all which I demand of them, and
vanish on my errands when I tell them. Can you guess who my last
is? Since I tired of Egmont, I have taken Sir Galahad, the spotless
knight. Did you ever read the Mort d'Arthur?"

"A hundred times."

"Of course!" and she spoke in a tone of contempt so strong that it
must have been affected. "What have you not read! And what have you
copied. No wonder that these English have been what they have been for
centuries, while their heroes have been the Galahads, and their Homer
the Mort d'Arthur."

"Enjoy your Utopia!" said he bitterly. "Do you fancy they acted up to
their ideals? They dreamed of the Quest of the Sangreal: but which of
them ever went upon it?"

"And does it count for nothing that they felt it the finest thing in
the world to have gone on it, had it been possible? Be sure if their
ideal was so self-sacrificing, so lofty, their practice was ruled by
something higher than the almighty dollar."

"And so are some other men's, Marie," answered he reproachfully.

"Yes, forsooth;--when the almighty dollar is there already, and a man
has ten times as much to spend every day as he can possibly invest in
French cookery, and wines, and fine clothes, then he begins to lay out
his surplus nobly on self-education, and the patronage of art, and the
theatre--for merely aesthetic purposes, of course; and when the lust
of the flesh has been satisfied, thinks himself an archangel, because
he goes on to satisfy the lust of the eye and the pride of life.
Christ was of old the model, and Sir Galahad wa