h light in the passage. She's labelled it Reverie. If she
had called it Influenza I could have understood it. I asked her where
she got the idea from, and she said she saw the sky like that one
evening in Norfolk. Great Heavens! then why didn't she shut her eyes or
go home and hide behind the bed-curtains? If I had seen a sky like that
in Norfolk I should have taken the first train back to London. I suppose
the poor girl can't help seeing these things, but why paint them?"

I said, "I suppose painting is a necessity to some natures."

"But why give the things to me?" he pleaded.

I could offer him no adequate reason.

"The idiotic presents that people give you!" he continued. "I said I'd
like Tennyson's poems one year. They had worried me to know what I did
want. I didn't want anything really; that was the only thing I could
think of that I wasn't dead sure I didn't want. Well, they clubbed
together, four of them, and gave me Tennyson in twelve volumes,
illustrated with coloured photographs. They meant kindly, of course. If
you suggest a tobacco-pouch they give you a blue velvet bag capable of
holding about a pound, embroidered with flowers, life-size. The only way
one could use it would be to put a strap to it and wear it as a satchel.
Would you believe it, I have got a velvet smoking-jacket, ornamented
with forget-me-nots and butterflies in coloured silk; I'm not joking.
And they ask me why I never wear it. I'll bring it down to the Club one
of these nights and wake the place up a bit: it needs it."

We had arrived by this at the steps of the 'Devonshire.'

"And I'm just as bad," he went on, "when I give presents. I never give
them what they want. I never hit upon anything that is of any use
to anybody. If I give Jane a chinchilla tippet, you may be certain
chinchilla is the most out-of-date fur that any woman could wear. 'Oh!
that is nice of you,' she says; 'now that is just the very thing I
wanted. I will keep it by me till chinchilla comes in again.' I give
the girls watch-chains when nobody is wearing watch-chains. When
watch-chains are all the rage I give them ear-rings, and they thank me,
and suggest my taking them to a fancy-dress ball, that being their only
chance to wear the confounded things. I waste money on white gloves with
black backs, to find that white gloves with black backs stamp a woman as
suburban. I believe all the shop-keepers in London save their old stock
to palm it off on me at Christmas