d:--

"The bowls were fragrant with attar, and those petals like fairy boats
skimmed over the scented surface of the water. They seemed very red
then, but they are faded enough now."

He again stared at the fire as though to assist his memory by its
pictures.

"Lalage is a great artist, and like all great artists her contact brings
completeness and a sense of fulfilment to everything--colour, purpose,
expression. I had just heard her in the _role_ of Chimene, in the
wonderful scene when, not daring to avow her love for Rodrigue, she
should have uttered '_Va-je ne te hais point_,' and where she merely
stood with moving lips--powerless to articulate from the suppressed
immensity of her passion. We, of the audience, by one consent seemed to
shiver--to shudder as though a polar breeze had swept over the tropic
night--so tragic, so real, so ardent, this unspeakable, this unspoken
confession."

"And what of Mons. Redan?" I questioned.

"The Count that turned actor? He played the part of Rodrigue, and he
told me afterwards that there were times when a sob would choke him as
he listened."

"And Redan loved her?"

"Loved? Oh, pale, anaemic, wan-complexioned word to run in leash with
Redan. He loved her so much that he was willing to barter name,
possessions, career for the warmth of her lips."

"And she?"

"And she----" he said, suddenly disturbing his fire panorama with a dash
of the poker. "Well, she took them."

There was silence for a moment or two as I turned the page--silence that
was accentuated by the falling ash, which dropped white and weightless
like the thousand lives that sink daily to dust exhausted with hope
deferred. Then he eyed the vegetable mass that faced me.

"A camellia," he explained, "crushed and brown. It was plucked from the
dead breast of a woman. It was the solitary witness of the last act of a
tragedy. The Prince K. was more than a kind patron--an almost friend to
me. He valued my apprehension of art, and shadowed me from the hour I
first began to paint little Gretchen carrying her father's cobblings to
their owners. He bought the picture, and ceaselessly employed me to make
sketches of her in some way or another--as a queen--as a boy--as a
_danseuse_. He loved to see her in all disguises, for she had the true
model's faculty for lending herself to, and developing every pose. Then
came the question of marriage--it is inevitable when a man meets a girl
with eyes like altar lights, clear