such music as that which is
better than all argument. I shall never forget the curious sensation
which came to me when first I heard the overture to Tannhaeuser played by
a big orchestra. You will not deny that it is splendid?"

"Undoubtedly it's fine--especially where the clarinets came in and you
seem to have five hundred mice running up your back. I am not going to
be drawn into an argument on the point--these likes and dislikes are
purely individual. To me it seems perfectly ridiculous that one man
should quarrel with another because a third person has said or written
something about which they disagree. In politics, of course, there is
justification. The Have-Nots want to get money out of the Haves and the
pockets supply the adjectives. But in the arts, which exist for our
pleasure,--why, I might as well fall foul of you because you do not like
caviar and are more partial to brunettes than to blondes. My taste is
all the other way--I dote upon caviar; golden-haired women are to me
just a little more attractive than the angels. But, of course, that does
not speak for their tempers."

He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant
restaurant where they dined to-night, he began to speak in a low tone of
Russian and Polish women generally.

"The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at a
time--in their own country, at any rate. The Russians, on the contrary,
are less selfish. A Russian woman is often the victim of three
centuries, of suppressed female ambitions. She has large ideas, fierce
passions, an excellent political sense--and all these must be cooled by
the wet blanket of a very ordinary domesticity. In reality, she is not
domesticated at all and would far sooner be following her lover--the one
chosen for the day--down the street with a flag. Here you have the
reason why a Russian woman appeals to us. She is rarely beautiful--some
of them would themselves admit the deficiency--but she is never an
embarrassment. Tell her that you are tired of her and you will discover
that she was about to stagger your vanity by a similar confidence. In
these days of revolution, she is seen at her best. Fear neither of God
nor man will restrain her. We have more of the show of religion and less
of the spirit in Russia than in any other country in the world. Here in
Poland, it is a little different. Some of our women are as the idealists
would have them to be. But there are others--or the city w