lit water
sometimes casts on a ceiling. Acting, I suppose, on the principle of
"Love me, love my dog," I had the temerity to express a commendation,
entirely insincere, of hers; and this being received with a graciousness
not perhaps unmixed with amusement, we were very soon in conversation.
She talked of Nice, of Baden-Baden, and London; then she got to
literature--I cannot remember how--and a moment later she was
vouchsafing to me the intimate information that she was a poetess, and
had contributed an anonymous poem to a certain lately published
collection. Then, having caught my name on a printed label, she said,
with a smile, "Is it possible that you are on your way to Torquay?" I
answered that I should be there shortly, and, while elaborating this
proposition, I managed to inspect the French poodle's collar, on which
was engraved the name of the fair owner. In a flash the personality of
this "daughter of dreams" was disclosed to me. This was Miss X, the most
talked about of the two wonderful sisters. As I gathered that she
herself would be soon at Torquay likewise, I tried, when she got out at
some intermediate station, to express a hope that, if we met in the
street, she would not have wholly forgotten me; but my modesty would not
allow me to find adequate words. On the Parade, however, at Torquay, a
fortnight later we did meet. She at once welcomed me with a laugh as
though I were an old acquaintance, and my intimacy with her lasted so
long, and to so much practical purpose, that it wrung from me at last a
poem of which the concluding lines were these:

Pause not to count the cost;
Think not, or all is lost--
Fly thou with me.

But the "incident," in parliamentary language, was soon afterward
"closed," partly because of her marriage to a very sensible husband,
and partly because, having become acquainted with her sister, I began to
look on the sister as the more romantic figure of the two.

The most successful rival, however, to the excitements of young romance
is to be found by some natures in the more complex stimulations of
society. In these the feminine element plays a conspicuous part; but a
part no less conspicuous is that played by the masculine. Moreover, as
the object of the social passion, unlike that of the romantic, is not
identified with the vagaries of any one individual, society for those
who court it is a corporation that never dies. It is for each individual
what no one individu