at the Reynolds Galleries
about the past and the possibilities of the future. The Major was very
benevolently intoxicated, and at short intervals he raised his glass
to G.J., who did not once fail to respond with an affectionate smile
which Christine had never before seen on G.J.'s face.

Suddenly Alice, who had been lounging semi-somnolent with an extinct
cigarette in her jewelled fingers, sat up and said in the uncertain
voice of an inexperienced girl who has ceased to count the number of
glasses emptied:

"Shall I recite? I've been trained, you know."

And, not waiting for an answer, she stood and recited, with a
surprisingly correct and sure pronunciation of difficult words to show
that she had, in fact, received some training:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently o'er a perfumed sea
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
To the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! In your brilliant window niche,
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

The uncomprehended marvellous poem, having startled the whole room,
ceased, and the rag-time resumed its sway. A drunken "Bravo!"
came from one table, a cheer from another. Young Alice nodded an
acknowledgment and sank loosely into her chair, exhausted by her last
effort against the spell of champagne and liqueurs. And the naive, big
Major, bewitched by the child, subsided into soft contact with her,
and they almost tearfully embraced. A waiter sedately replaced a glass
which Alice's drooping, negligent hand had over-turned, and wiped the
cloth. G.J. was silent. The whole table was silent.

"_Est-ce de la grande poesie_?" asked Christine of G.J., who did not
reply. Christine, though she condemned Alice as now disgusting, had
been taken aback and, in spite of herself, much impressed by the
surprising display of elocution.

"_Oui_," said Molder, in his clipped, self-conscious Oxford French.

Two couples from other tables were dancing in the middle of the room.

Molder demanded, leaning towards her:

"I say, do you dance?"

"But certainly," said Christine. "I learnt at the convent." And she
spoke of her convent education, a triumphant subject with her, though
she had actually