festation of the quality in both of them. It was not
that the humour, which he felt and expressed, was less delicate
in quality or less informed by deep human insight and the true
_nihil-humanum-a-me-alienum-puto_ spirit than hers, but it was less
wide and far-reaching in its purview of human feelings and passions
and interests; more often individual in its applicability, and less
drawn from the depths of human nature as exhibited by types
and classes. And often they would cap each other with a mutual
relationship similar to that between a rule of syntax and its example,
sometimes the one coming first and sometimes the other.

I remember that during the happy days of this visit I was writing a
novel, afterwards published under the title of _A Siren_, and Lewes
asked me to show him the manuscript, then nearly completed. Of course
I was only too glad to have the advantage of his criticism. He was
much struck by the story, but urged me to invert the order in which
it was told. The main incident of the plot is a murder caused by
jealousy, and I had begun by narrating the circumstances which led up
to it in their natural sequence. He advised me to begin by bringing
before the reader the murdered body of the victim, and then unfold the
causes which had led to the crime. And I followed his advice.

The murder is represented as having been committed on a sleeping
person by piercing the heart with a needle, and then artistically
covering the almost imperceptible orifice of the wound with wax, in
such sort as to render the discovery of the wound and the cause of
death almost impossible even by professional eyes. And I may mention
that the facts were related to me by a distinguished man of science at
Florence, as having really occurred.

Perhaps, since I have been led to speak of this story of mine, I may
be excused for recording an incident connected with it, which occurred
some years subsequently at Rome, in the drawing-room of Mrs. Marsh.
The scene of the story is Ravenna. And Mrs. Marsh specially introduced
me to a very charming young couple, the Count and Countess Pasolini
of Ravenna, as the author of _A Siren_. They said they had been most
anxious to know who could have written that book! They thought that no
Englishman could have been resident at Ravenna without their having
known him, or at least known _of_ him. And yet it was evident that a
writer, who could photograph the life and society of Ravenna as it had
been pho