eached the point at
which he could tolerate the tragic spectacle no more, and he burst out
vulgarly, in a man-in-the-street vein, chopping off the brilliant
conversation as with a chopper:

"Now, Miss Fancy, tell us something about yourself."

The common-sounding phrase seemed to be a magic formula endowed with the
power to break an awful spell. Miss Fancy gathered herself together,
forgot that she had been defeated, and inaugurated a new battle. She
began to tell the table not something, but almost everything, about
herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman.
She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational duels she
had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been
worsted, save by base combinations deliberately engineered against
her--generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more than men.
Her sincere belief that no biographical detail concerning Miss Fancy was
too small to be uninteresting to the public amounted to a religious
creed; and her memory for details was miraculous. She recalled the exact
total of the takings at any given performance in which she was prominent
in any city of the United States, and she could also give long extracts
from the favourable criticisms of countless important American
newspapers,--by a singular coincidence only unimportant newspapers had
ever mingled blame with their praise of her achievements. She regarded
herself with detachment as a remarkable phenomenon, and therefore she
could impersonally describe her career without any of the ordinary
restraints--just as a shopman might clothe or unclothe a model in his
window. Thus she could display her heart and its history quite
unreservedly,--did they not belong to the public?

The astounded table learnt that Miss Fancy was illustrious in the press
of the United States as having been engaged to be married more often
than any other actress. Yet she had never got as far as the altar,
though once she had reached the church-door--only to be swept away from
it by a cyclone which unhappily finished off the bridegroom. (What grey
and tedious existences Eve and Sissie had led!) Her penultimate
engagement had been to the late Silas Angmering.

"Something told me I should never be his wife," she said vivaciously.
"You know the feeling we women have. And I wasn't much surprised to hear
of his death. I'd refused Silas eight times; then in the end I promised
to marry him by a certai