ave been a happy wife,
And nursed a baby on my knee,
And never blushed to give it life.'

"I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn't know at
all, at all, what it meant. Mustn't sing that sort of song in company.
We're oh! so proper--even we!

'If I had a husband, what think you I'd do?
I'd make it my business to keep him a lover;
For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
Some other amusement he'll quickly discover.'

"For such are young gentlemen made of--made of: such are young gentlemen
made of!"

After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He was in the mood
when imagination intensely vivifies everything. Mere suggestions of music
sufficed. The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was the lady
before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid night-flowers; he
saw the stars crowd large and close above the arid plain this lady
leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her abandoned heart.

Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.

The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In Venice
she was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any woman anywhere.
But, oh! to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion through throbbing
street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends; under storied
bridges; past palaces charged with full life in dead quietness; past
grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, and out, and on with
her, on into the silver infinity shaking over seas!

Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two
former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many
instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And this
enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her touch. She was
no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might have seen a
manoeuvre. She liked him--liked none better. She wished him well. Her
pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome, and he was going. What she
liked him for, she rather--very slightly--wished to do away with, or see
if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty
butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings. No harm intended to the
innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the
marvel of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of
thinking one could crush it, if one would.

He knew her what she was, this lady. In Sev