y-de-la-Zouch. The
possession of such a euphonious birthplace would have coloured all my
life."

"But like the Scotsman you would have revered your home from a
distance," said Thessaly. "I agree with you that it would have been an
ideal birthplace if you had left it at so tender an age that you failed
to recall its physical peculiarities. It is the same with women. In
order that one should retain nothing but fairy memories of a
woman--memories of some poetic name, of the perfume of roses, of beauty
glimpsed through gossamer--it is important that one should not have
lived with her. Herein lies the lasting glamour of the woman we have
never possessed."

II

The world had been discussing Paul Mario's New Gospel as enunciated in
_The Gates_ for three weeks or more. On a bright morning when sunbeams
filtered through the dust which partially curtained the windows of
Guilder's, and painted golden squares and rectangles upon the floor,
Flamby stood where the light touched her elfin hair into torch-like
flame, removing a very smart studio smock preparatory to departing to
Regali's for lunch. There was no one else in the small painting-room,
except a wondrous-hued parrakeet upon a perch, from which he
contemplated his portrait in oils, head knowingly tilted to one side,
with solemn disapproval for Flamby had painted his bill too red and he
knew it, apparently.

"Bad," he remarked. "Damn bad."

He belonged to Crozier, the artist famed for "sun-soaked flesh," and
Crozier's pupils were all too familiar with this formula. It was so
often upon Crozier's lips that Lorenzo the Magnificent (the parrakeet)
had acquired it perfectly.

"Quite right, Lorenzo," said Flamby, throwing her smock on to a stool.
"It's blasted bad."

"Damn bad," corrected Lorenzo. "No guts."

"I don't agree with you there, Lorenzo. It's your nose that I hate."

"No sun!" screamed Lorenzo, excitedly. "The bloodsome thing never saw
the sun!"

"Oh, please behave, Lorenzo, or I shall not share my sugar ration with
you any more."

"Sugar?" inquired Lorenzo, head on one side again.

Flamby held up a lump of sugar upon her small pink palm, and a silence
of contentment immediately descended upon Lorenzo, only broken by the
sound of munching. Flamby was just going out to wash the paint from her
hands, for she always contrived to get nearly as much upon her fingers
as upon the canvas, when a cheery voice cried: "Ha! caught you. Thought
I might be too late