se
lecture, like Edward Lear's nonsense books. Do you see? It was a turning
of everything topsy-turvy. So what we have to do is just the opposite of
everything Mr. Amarinth advised. You understand, my boy?"

"All right, mumsy," said Tommy. "But I forget what he said."

Lady Locke looked pleased, kissed his flushed little face, and packed
him off.

"I hope the school children will do the same," she said to Lord Reggie
when he was gone. "What a blessing a short memory can be!"

"Didn't you like the lecture, then?" Reggie asked. "I thought it
splendid, so full of imagination, so exquisitely choice in language and
in feeling."

"And so self-conscious."

"Yes, as all art must be."

"Art! art! You could make me hate that word!"

Reggie looked for once honestly shocked.

"You could hate art?" he said.

"Yes, if I could believe that it was the antagonist of Nature, instead
of the faithful friend. No, I did not like the lecture, if one can like
or dislike a mere absurdity. Tell me, Lord Reggie, are you
self-consciously absurd?"

He drew his chair a little nearer to hers.

"I don't know," he said; "I hope I am beautiful. If I am beautiful, that
is all I wish for. To be beautiful is to be complete. To be clever is
easy enough. To be beautiful is so difficult, that even Byron had a club
foot with all his genius. Cleverness can be acquired. Hundreds of stupid
people nowadays acquire the faculty of cleverness. That is why society
is so boring. You find people practising mental scales and five-finger
exercises at every party you go to. The true artist will never practise.
How soft this twilight is, though not so delicate and subtle as that in
Millet's 'Angelus.' Lady Locke, I have something to tell you, and I will
tell it to you now, while the stars come out, and the shadows steal from
their homes in the trees. Esme said to-day that marriage was a brilliant
absurdity. Will you be brilliantly absurd? Will you marry me?"

He leaned forward, and took her hand rather negligently in his small and
soft one. His face was calm, and he spoke in a clear and even voice.
Lady Locke left her hand in his. She was quite calm too.

"I cannot marry you," she said. "Do you wish me to tell you why?
Probably you do not; but I think I will tell you all the same. I am not
brilliant, and therefore I have no wish to be absurd. If I married you I
should be merely absurd without being brilliant at all. You do not love
me. I think you love not