asure. A
piece of money is like a piece of opium, for in it lie locked up the
most wonderful dreams--if you have only the brains and hearts to dream
them.

When at last the little feast grew near its end, Love and Beauty would
smoke their cigarettes together; and it was a favourite trick of theirs
to lower the lamp a moment, so that they might see the stars rush down
upon them through the skylight which hung above their table. It gave
them a sense of great sentinels, far away out in the lonely universe,
standing guard over them, seemed to say that their love was safe in the
tender keeping of great forces. They were poor, but then they had the
stars and the flowers and the great poets for their servants and
friends; and, best of all, they had each other. Do you call that being
poor?

And then, in the corner, stood that magical box with the ivory keys,
whose strings waited ready night and day--strange media through which
the myriad voices, the inner-sweet thoughts, of the great world-soul
found speech, messengers of the stars to the heart, and of the heart to
the stars.

Beauty's songs were very simple. She got little practice, for her poet
only cared to have her sing over and over again the same sweet songs;
and perhaps if you had heard her sing 'Ask nothing more of me, sweet,'
or 'Darby and Joan,' you would have understood his indifference to
variety.

At last the little feast is quite, quite finished. Beauty has gone home;
her lover still carries her face in his heart as she waved and waved and
waved to him from the rattling lighted tramcar; long he sits and sits
thinking of her, gazing up at those lonely ancient stars; the air is
still bright with her presence, sweet with her thoughts, warm with her
kisses, and as he turns to the shut piano, he can still see her white
hands on the keys and her girlish face raised in an ecstasy--Beata
Beatrix--above the music.

'O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring--
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death's imperishable wing!'

And then ... he would throw himself upon his bed, and burst into tears.

* * * * *

'And they are gone: aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.'

That seventh-story heaven once more leads a dull life as the office of