port and love in a manner that suggested the collaboration of a
stud-groom and a ladies' college. In an ordinary way, however, Salisbury
would have been carried on by the interest of the story up to
lunch-time, but this morning he fidgeted in and out of his chair, took
the book up and laid it down again, and swore at last to himself and at
himself in mere irritation. In point of fact the jingle of the paper
found in the archway had 'got into his head,' and do what he would he
could not help muttering over and over, 'Once around the grass, and
twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple tree.' It became a
positive pain, like the foolish burden of a music-hall song,
everlastingly quoted, and sung at all hours of the day and night, and
treasured by the street-boys as an unfailing resource for six months
together. He went out into the streets, and tried to forget his enemy in
the jostling of the crowds and the roar and clatter of the traffic, but
presently he would find himself stealing quietly aside, and pacing some
deserted byway, vainly puzzling his brains, and trying to fix some
meaning to phrases that were meaningless. It was a positive relief when
Thursday came, and he remembered that he had made an appointment to go
and see Dyson; the flimsy reveries of the self-styled man of letters
appeared entertaining when compared with this ceaseless iteration, this
maze of thought from which there seemed no possibility of escape.
Dyson's abode was in one of the quietest of the quiet streets that led
down from the Strand to the river, and when Salisbury passed from the
narrow stairway into his friend's room, he saw that the uncle had been
beneficent indeed. The floor glowed and flamed with all the colours of
the East; it was, as Dyson pompously remarked, 'a sunset in a dream,'
and the lamplight, the twilight of London streets, was shut out with
strangely worked curtains, glittering here and there with threads of
gold. In the shelves of an oak _armoire_ stood jars and plates of old
French china, and the black and white of etchings not to be found in the
Haymarket or in Bond Street, stood out against the splendour of a
Japanese paper. Salisbury sat down on the settle by the hearth, and
sniffed the mingled fumes of incense and tobacco, wondering and dumb
before all this splendour after the green rep and the oleographs, the
gilt-framed mirror, and the lustres of his own apartment.

'I am glad you have come,' said Dyson. 'Comfo