verty
from the world; I plan it out in splendid generalities, sometimes in
minute detail. . . . Of men, we naturally dream; but vaguely, in a
curious and confused way. . . . Once, when I was fourteen, I saw a
volunteer regiment passing; and it halted for a while in front of our
house; and a brilliant being on a black horse turned lazily in his
saddle and glanced up at our window. . . . Captain Selwyn, it is quite
useless for you to imagine what fairy scenes, what wondrous perils, what
happy adventures that gilt-corded adjutant and I went through in my
dreams. Marry him? Indeed I did, scores of times. Rescue him? Regularly.
He was wounded, he was attacked by fevers unnumbered, he fled in peril
of his life, he vegetated in countless prisons, he was misunderstood, he
was a martyr to suspicion, he was falsely accused, falsely condemned.
And then, just before the worst occurred, _I_ appear!--the inevitable
I."

She dropped back into the chair, laughing. Her colour was high, her eyes
brilliant; she laid her arms along the velvet arms of the chair and
looked at him.

"I've not had you to talk to for a whole week," she said; "and you'll
let me; won't you? I can't help it, anyway, because as soon as I see
you--crack! a million thoughts wake up in me and clipper-clapper goes my
tongue. . . . You are very good for me. You are so thoroughly
satisfactory--except when your eyes narrow in that dreadful far-away
gaze--which I've forbidden, you understand. . . . _What_ have you done
to your moustache?"

"Clipped it."

"Oh, I don't like it too short. Can you get hold of it to pull it? It's
the only thing that helps you in perplexity to solve problems. You'd be
utterly helpless, mentally, without your moustache. . . . When are we to
take up our Etruscan symbols again?--or was it Evans's monograph we were
laboriously dissecting? Certainly it was; don't you remember the Hittite
hieroglyph of Jerabis?--and how you and I fought over those wretched
floral symbols? You don't? And it was only a week ago? . . . And listen!
Down at Silverside I've been reading the most delicious thing--the Mimes
of Herodas!--oh, so charmingly quaint, so perfectly human, that it seems
impossible that they were written two thousand years ago. There's a
maid, in one scene, Threissa, who is precisely like anybody's maid--and
an old lady, Gyllis--perfectly human, and not Greek, but Yankee of
to-day! Shall we reread it together?--when you come down to stay with us