es very seriously, were civil to the young ladies,--confidential
with the married women, and had generally a certain reserve and dignity
which belong to persons upon whom such heavy responsibility rests.

There were, to be sure, men who looked bored, and women who were
listless, missing the stimulus of any personal interest; but the scene
was so animated, the weather so propitious, that, on the whole, a person
must be very cynical not to find the occasion delightful.

There was a young novelist present whose first story, "The Girl I Left
Behind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take a
profound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be read
aloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him,
although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He
was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes,
to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual
frown. Mr. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very
exact in his pronunciation, careful about his manner, and had the air of
a little weariness, of the responsibility of one looking at life. It was
only at rare moments that his face expressed intensity of feeling.

"It is a very pretty scene. I suppose, Mr. Bass, that you are making
studies," said Margaret, by way of opening a conversation.

"No; hardly that. One must always observe. It gets to be a habit. The
thing is to see reality under appearances."

"Then you would call yourself a realist?"

Mr. Bass smiled. "That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want is
nature, color, passion--to pierce the artificialities."

"But you must describe appearance."

"Certainly, to an extent--form, action, talk as it is, even trivialities
--especially the trivialities, for life is made up of the trivial."

"But suppose that does not interest me?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Henderson, that is because you are used to the
conventional, the selected. Nature is always interesting."

"I do not find it so."

"No? Nature has been covered up; it has been idealized. Look yonder," and
Mr. Bass pointed across the lawn. "See that young woman upon whom the
sunlight falls standing waiting her turn. See the quivering of the
eyelids, the heaving of the chest, the opening lips; note the curve of
her waist from the shoulder, and the line rounding into the fall of the
folds of the Austrian cashmere. I try to saturate myself wit