t an age of prose and prudence is
possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly.
The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to
make it so."

"_Is_ it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.

"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and
the sense of Humour."

"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex,"
said she. "_Is_ it a woman?"

"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I
don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you
that in a sense it is."

"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her
pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all
about it."

"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.

"Good--excellent," she approved. "But--but what do you mean by 'in a
sense'?"

"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that."

"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.

"It isn't one woman--it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he
announced.

Her face fell. "Oh--?" she faltered.

"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.

She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type--?"

"Yes," said he.

She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a
Mohammedan, in the next like--I don't know what."

"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the
type of the Quattrocento."

He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire,
half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm,
glimmered in his eyes.

"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows, that
were once rosy flesh; these proud, humble, innocent, subtle, brave, shy,
pious, pleasure-loving women of the long ago. With them; with their hair
and eyes and jewels, their tip-tilted, scornful, witty little noses,
their 'throats so round and lips so red,' their splendid raiment; with
their mirth, pathos, passion, kindness and cruelty, their infinite
variety, their undying youth. Ah, the pity of it! Their undying
youth--and they so irrevocably dead. Peace be to their souls! See," he
suddenly declaimed, laughing, "how the sun, the very sun in heaven, is
contending with me, as to which of us shall do them the greater homage,
the sun that once looked on their living forms, and remembers--see how
he lights memorial lamps about them," for the sun,