d there are some
deliciously coarse-looking pocket-handkerchiefs in the window, about a
yard square. I must get a dozen of those."

At lunch that day Lord Reggie announced that he had composed a beautiful
anthem on the words--

"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy
temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks."

"They sound exactly like something of Esme's," he said, "but really they
are taken from the 'Song of Solomon.' I had no idea that the Bible was
so intensely artistic. There are passages in the Book of Job that I
should not be ashamed to have written."

"You remind me of a certain lady writer who is very popular in kitchen
circles," said Esme, "and whose husband once told me that she had
founded her style upon Mr. Ruskin and the better parts of the Bible. She
brings out about seven books every year, I am told, and they are all
about sailors, of whom she knows absolutely nothing. I am perpetually
meeting her, and she always asks me to lunch, and says she knows my
brother. She seems to connect my poor brother with lunch in some curious
way. I shall never lunch with her, but she will always ask me."

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," Mrs. Windsor said, with a
little air of aptness.

"That is one of the greatest fallacies of a melancholy age," Esme
answered, arranging the huge moonstone in his tie with a plump hand;
"suicide would be the better word. 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray' has made
suicide quite the rage. A number of most respectable ladies, without the
vestige of a past among them, have put an end to themselves lately, I am
told. To die naturally has become most unfashionable, but no doubt the
tide will turn presently."

"I wonder if people realise how dangerous they may be in their
writings," said Lady Locke.

"One has to choose between being dangerous and being dull. Society loves
to feel itself upon the edge of a precipice, I assure you. To be
harmless is the most deadly enemy to social salvation. Strict
respectability would even handicap a rich American nowadays, and rich
Americans are terribly respectable by nature. That is why they are
always so anxious to get into the Prince of Wales' set."

"I suppose Ibsen is responsible for a good deal," Mrs. Windsor said
rather vaguely. Luncheon always rendered her rather vague, and after
food her intellect struggled for egress, as the sun struggles to emerge
from behind intercepting clouds.

"I belie