he rhythmic parabolic curve of bare shoulders. Silken ankles and
amorous whisperings stir her--if not to deeds of valour, then at least
to deeds of indiscretion. London, it seems, cannot look upon the moon
without suffering some of the love qualms of Endymion. In fine, London,
the mentalized, is human.

It was only last year that the rumours of London's night life sank
into the depths of my sensitive ears. At first I put such murmurings
aside as psychiatric ravings of visionaries and yearners. Always at the
first signs of neurosis--the inevitable result of the simple life--I
dashed to Paris, to the golden-haired Reine at the Marigny; or else I
cabled to Anna of the Admiral's Palast in Berlin; or, if time permitted,
I sought the glittering presence of Bianca Weise at Vienna. (Ah, Bianca!
_Du suesser Engel!_) Never once did it occur to me that youth stalked
abroad in the London streets, that gaiety sang among the wine cups in
London cafes, that romance went drunk amid the mazes of abandoned
dancing. London had always seemed to me essentially senile--grey-haired
and sedate. And so I devoted myself to the labours of youth, as did the
youthful George Moore; and when the first crocuses of the spring
appeared, and the lilacs came forth, and the April primroses got into my
blood, and the hawthorn sent forth its pink and white shoots, I sought
the Luxembourg or the Tiergarten or the Prater. Why, indeed, I thought,
should spring come to London? Why should Henley, an Englishman, have
called Spring "the wild, the sweet-blooded, wonderful harlot"? And why
should the year's first crocus have brought him luck? Had he indeed lain
mouth to mouth with spring in London? Perhaps. But I doubted him.
Therefore, before the lavender appeared, I was beyond the channel.

But last spring I met the girl in the flat below me. Her name was
Elsie--Winwood, I think. Of one thing, however, I am sure; she had cold
grey eyes and auburn hair--an uncanny combination; but she was typical
of the English girl, the girl who had been educated abroad. This girl
and I came face to face on the stairs one day.

"Why do you always leave London at the best time of the year?" she asked
me.

"I am young," I confessed. "In the spring I live by night, and one may
only sleep in London at night."

"But you do not know London," she told me.

She smiled intimatingly and disappeared into the gloom of her studio.

That night I thought of Arthur Symons's "London Nights."