pass; but the early dawn of our making is
reddened by the sunset of another's decline. We are agitated by the
originality of our ideas, unaware that they are born simultaneously in a
thousand minds, and are woven into the texture of our time-spirit in a
thousand-times-repeated design. Von Roon, in Chelsea, used to say that
"a man's mind was like a chamber papered with used postage stamps.
Examine them separately and they were of no value; they were merely
cancelled symbols of forgotten messages. View them as a whole and they
formed an interesting and confusing composition." Time, and our
proximity to other cancelled symbols is no guarantee of interior
understanding. The Great Decorator has arranged us without regard for
our individual merits or past intrinsic values, we are but points of
colour in his immense and arbitrary arrangement. I was following up this
thought, when the brass Canterbury Pilgrim that serves us for a knocker
was vigorously sounded, and I sprang to open the door to Miss Fraenkel.

She stepped briskly into the room, looked round and smiled.

"Three times," she declared as I assisted her to remove her jacket. "But
I forgive you if you'll only play that won--derful thing again!"

In person Miss Fraenkel was of middle size, admirably proportioned and
situated in tone on the borderland between the blonde and the brunette.
By which I mean that her hair was brown, her eye a warm hazel, and her
skin of a satiny pallor that formed an effective background for a
delightful flush that suffused her piquant features whenever her
enthusiasm was roused. And her enthusiasm was continually being roused.
To us cold Britons the _abandon_ with which she, in common with her
countrywomen, gave herself up to the enjoyment of a picture, a book, a
landscape, or for that matter of a person, was a most fascinating
spectacle. American women strongly resemble champagne. At a certain age
they are incomparably stimulating, but intimacy with them involves a
sort of "headiness" that demands discretion; a nervous energy emanates
from them that tends to relax the critical faculty. There is, moreover,
a tendency to turgescence in their speech that leads the unwary into a
false estimate of their intellectual range.

It was some time before the conversation could be guided round to the
subject which we three at any rate had at heart. Explosive cries of
delight over Mac's last etching, Bill's new waist and a Chinese print I
had recent