ithout a past, must be like going about without one's
trousers. I should feel positively indecent."

"There is no such thing as indecency, Esme, just as there are no such
things as right and wrong. There are only art and imbecility. But how
shall I prepare for my proposal? What did you do?"

"I did nothing. My wife proposed to me, and I refused her. Then she
went and put up some things called banns, I believe. Afterwards she sent
me a white waistcoat in a brown paper parcel, and told me to meet her at
a certain church on a certain day. I declined. She came in a hired
carriage--a thing like a large deep bath, with two enormously fat
parti-coloured horses--to fetch me. To avoid a scene I went with her,
and I understand that we were married. But the colour of the window
behind the altar was so atrocious, and the design--of Herodias carrying
about the head of John the Baptist on a dish--so inartistically true to
life, that I could not possibly attend to the service."

"Poor Esme," said Lord Reggie, in a tone charged with pathos, "I must
trust in my intuitions, then?"

"That is like trusting in one's convictions, Reggie. For the sake of the
stars do not be sensible. I would far rather see you lying in your
grave. Trust rather in your emotions."

"But I have none about Lady Locke. How could you suppose so?"

"I never suppose. I leave that to the heads of departments when they are
answering questions in the House. It is the privilege of incompetence to
suppose. The artist will always know. But there is Lady Locke, Reggie,
being sensible in the rose garden. What must the roses think of her? Go
to her, Reggie, tell her that you do not love her, and will marry her.
That is what a true woman loves to hear."

As Lord Reggie went away, walking very delicately, with his head
drooping towards his left shoulder, and his hands dangling in a
dilettante manner at his sides, Madame Valtesi appeared at the French
window of the drawing-room, refusing to join Tommy in some boyish game.
After a parleying, which she conducted in profile, she turned her full
face round, and having shaken her tormentor off, she proceeded slowly
towards Amarinth, with an expression of extreme and illimitable
irritability.

"Children are more lacking in discernment than the beasts of the field,"
she said, as she came up to him. "That boy is actually vexed because I
will not go and play at Tom Tiddler's Ground with him. He positively
expected that I would b