line that was printed about her, tasting her triumph as she had never
tasted it before. And how she revelled in the Brobdingnagian drawings of
her, which, printed in nineteen colours, towered between the columns or
sprawled across them! There she was, measuring herself back to back with
the Statue of Liberty; scudding through the firmament on a comet,
whilst a crowd of tiny men in evening-dress stared up at her from the
terrestrial globe; peering through a microscope held by Cupid over a
diminutive Uncle Sam; teaching the American Eagle to stand on its head;
and doing a hundred-and-one other things--whatever suggested itself
to the fancy of native art. And through all this iridescent maze of
symbolism were scattered many little slabs of realism. At home, on the
street, Zuleika was the smiling target of all snap-shooters, and all the
snap-shots were snapped up by the press and reproduced with annotations:
Zuleika Dobson walking on Broadway in the sables gifted her by Grand
Duke Salamander--she says "You can bounce blizzards in them"; Zuleika
Dobson yawning over a love-letter from millionaire Edelweiss; relishing
a cup of clam-broth--she says "They don't use clams out there"; ordering
her maid to fix her a warm bath; finding a split in the gloves she has
just drawn on before starting for the musicale given in her honour by
Mrs. Suetonius X. Meistersinger, the most exclusive woman in New York;
chatting at the telephone to Miss Camille Van Spook, the best-born girl
in New York; laughing over the recollection of a compliment made her by
George Abimelech Post, the best-groomed man in New York; meditating a
new trick; admonishing a waiter who has upset a cocktail over her skirt;
having herself manicured; drinking tea in bed. Thus was Zuleika enabled
daily to be, as one might say, a spectator of her own wonderful life.
On her departure from New York, the papers spoke no more than the
truth when they said she had had "a lovely time." The further she went
West--millionaire Edelweiss had loaned her his private car--the lovelier
her time was. Chicago drowned the echoes of New York; final Frisco
dwarfed the headlines of Chicago. Like one of its own prairie-fires, she
swept the country from end to end. Then she swept back, and sailed for
England. She was to return for a second season in the coming Fall. At
present, she was, as I have said, "resting."

As she sat here in the bay-window of her room, she was not reviewing
the splendid