in and small as silk;
but even while dallying with its smoothness and pleasantness, a misty,
indefinite sensation of impending danger creeps over him. Be quiet,
little fly! Gently--gently: slip away if you can--but no defiance, no
tugging, no floundering, or you are lost!

A mythic story is told of the woman of the world: how in early life
she was crossed in love; how she lost faith in feelings that seemed to
exist exceptionally only in her own solitary bosom; and how a certain
glassy hardness gathered upon her heart, as she sat waiting and
waiting for a response to the inner voices she had suffered to burst
forth--

The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again!

But this is a fable. The woman of the world was never young--not while
playing with her doll. She grew just as you see her, and will suffer
no change till the dissolution of the elements of her body.
Love-passages she has indeed had like other women; but the love was
all on one side, and that side not hers. It is curious to observe the
passion thus lavished in vain. It reminds one of the German story of
the Cave of Mirrors, where a fairy damsel, with beckoning hand and
beseeching eyes, was reflected from a thousand angles. The pursuing
lover, endeavouring to clasp his mistress, flung himself from one
illusory image to another, finding only the sharp, polished,
glittering glass in his embrace, till faint, breathless, and bleeding,
he sank upon the ground.

The woman of the world, though a dangerous mistress, is an agreeable
friend. She is partial to the everyday married lady, when presentable
in point of dress and manners, and overwhelms her with little
condescending kindnesses and caresses. This good lady, on her part,
thinks her patroness a remarkably clever woman; not that she
understands her, or knows exactly what she is about; but somehow or
other she is _sure_ she is prodigiously clever. As for the everyday
young lady, who has a genius for reverence, she reveres her; and these
two, with their male congeners, are the dress-figures the woman of the
world places about her rooms like ivory pieces on a chessboard.

This admirable lady is sometimes a mother, and she is devotedly fond
of her children, in their future. She may be seen gazing in their
faces by the hour; but the picture that is before her mind's eye is
the fulfilment of their present promise. An ordinary woman would
dawdle away her time in admiring their soft e