ng at his door very
soon, impatient to be off, and he flung a promise of 'supper presently'
to one whose modest purse had fallen into a debate with this lordly
hostelry, counting that a supper and a night there would do for it. They
hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river of cross-currents by the
side of seated groups; and the willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine
perfumery, cigar-smoke, chatter, laughter, told of pleasure reigning.

Fleetwood scanned the groups. He had seen enough in a moment and his face
blackened. A darting waiter was called to him.

He said to Woodseer, savagely, as it sounded: 'You shall have something
to joint your bones!' What cause of wrath he had was past a guess: a wolf
at his vitals bit him, hardening his handsome features.

The waiter darted back, bearing a tray and tall glasses filled each with
piled parti-coloured liqueurs, on the top of which an egg-yolk swam.
Fleetwood gave example. Swallowing your egg, the fiery-velvet triune
behind slips after it, in an easy milky way, like a princess's train on a
state-march, and you are completely, transformed, very agreeably; you
have become a merry demon. 'Well, yes, it's next to magic,' he replied to
Woodseer's astonished snigger after the draught, and explained, that it
was a famous Viennese four-of-the-morning panacea, the revellers'
electrical restorer. 'Now you can hold on for an hour or two, and then
we'll sup. At Rome?'

'Ay! Druids to-morrow!' cried the philosopher bewitched.

He found himself bowing to a most heavenly lady, composed of day and
night in her colouring, but more of night, where the western edge has
become a pale steel blade. Men were around her, forming a semi-circle.
The world of men and women was mere timber and leafage to this flower of
her sex, glory of her kind. How he behaved in her presence, he knew not;
he was beyond self-criticism or conscious reflection; simply the engine
of the commixed three liqueurs, with parlous fine thoughts, and a sense
of steaming into the infinite.

To leave her was to have her as a moon in the heavens and to think of her
creatively. A swarm of images rushed about her and away, took lustre and
shade. She was a miracle of greyness, her eyes translucently grey, a
dark-haired queen of the twilights; and his heart sprang into his brain
to picture the novel beauty; language became a flushed Bacchanal in a
ring of dancing similes. Lying beside a bank of silvery cinquefoil
against