s; that the world inside me isn't a meaningless chaos, but a world
of order, like the world outside, governed by beautiful laws, as the
Stars are governed.'

'Ah, how I love the Stars!' murmured Lady Hyslop. 'What things they say
to me! They are the pledges of lost recognitions; the promise of
ineffable mitigations.'

'Mitigations?' I gasped, feeling for a moment a little giddy. But it
didn't matter: always when we meet Lady Hyslop and I have the most
wonderful conversations.

WAXWORKS

'But one really never knows the Age one lives in. How interesting it
would be,' I said to the lady next me, 'how I wish we could see
ourselves as Posterity will see us!'

I have said it before, but on this occasion I was struck--almost
thunder-struck--by my own remark. Like a rash enchanter, the spirit I
had raised myself alarmed me. For a queer second I did see ourselves in
that inevitable mirror, but cadaverous and out-of-date and palsied--a
dusty set of old waxworks, simpering inanely in the lumber-room of Time.

'Better to be forgotten at once!' I exclaimed, with an emphasis that
seemed to surprise the lady next me.

ADJECTIVES

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no
longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of
eloquent Death, and the negro and star-enamelled Night?

WHERE?

I, who move and breathe and place one foot before the other, who watch
the Moon wax and wane, and put off answering my letters, where shall I
find the Bliss which dreams and blackbirds' voices promise, of which the
waves whisper, and hand-organs in streets near Paddington faintly sing?

Does it dwell in some island of the South Seas, or far oasis among
deserts and gaunt mountains; or only in those immortal gardens imagined
by Chinese poets beyond the great cold palaces of the Moon?

IN THE STREET

These eye-encounters in the street, little touches of love-liking; faces
that ask, as they pass, 'Are you my new lover?' Shall I one day--in Park
Lane or Oxford Street perhaps--see the unknown Face I dread and look
for?

THE ABBEY AT NIGHT

And as at night I went past the Abbey, saw its walls towering high and
solemn among the autumn stars, I pictured to myself the white population
in the vast darkness of its interior--all that hushed people of
Heroes--; not dead, I would think them, but animated with a still kind
of life; and at last, after all their intolera