who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to
murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in
which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate
sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I
rather thought, in "snap." Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata"
[spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of
form, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was
rather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any
substance at all? It did not occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a
fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _I_ was! I inclined to
give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read "L'Apres-midi d'un
faune" without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet Mallarme, of
course, was a master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another?
There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed, arresting, but
perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden, perhaps, with meanings as deep
as Mallarme's own. I awaited his poems with an open mind.

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a
second meeting with him. This was on an evening in January. Going
into the aforesaid domino-room, I had passed a table at which sat a
pale man with an open book before him. He had looked from his book to
me, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I ought
to have recognized him. I returned to pay my respects. After
exchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see I
am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but, "I prefer," Soames
replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed his
gesture that I should sit down.

I asked him if he often read here.

"Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating the
title of his book--"The Poems of Shelley."

"Anything that you really"--and I was going to say "admire?" But I
cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done
so, for he said with unwonted emphasis, "Anything second-rate."

I had read little of Shelley, but, "Of course," I murmured, "he's very
uneven."

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A
deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place
breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book and
glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short,
sin