s not. It is true, you go to the
Academy, and in the Cleopatras and Psyches you recognize the same Mary
Jane who the day before offered herself as model to you. My Sphinx,
however, was not born in Clapham. Nor does she dwell in Pimlico. But,
apropos to Pimlico, I have a fancy that that little friend of yours is
on her way to St. John's Wood."

"What little friend?"

"Why, the girl that sits opposite. And what's more to the point, she's
in love with you. _Tous mes compliments, c'est un vrai morceau de roi._"

At this Tristrem blushed in spite of himself. She might have been the
Helen for whom the war of the world was fought; she might have been
Mylitta or Venus Basilea, and still would she have left him unimpressed.
He would not have recognized the divinity--he bowed but to one.

"You remind me," said Yorke, who had watched his expression--"you remind
me of De Marsay, who did not know what he did to the women to make them
all fall in love with him. There is nothing as fetching as that. And
there is nothing, at least to my thinking, that compares with that charm
which a woman in love exhales to her lover. It is small matter whether
the woman is the daughter of an earl or whether she is a cocotte. There
are, I know, people who like their claret in decanters, but so long as
the wine is good, what does the bottle matter?

"'_Aimer est le grand point, qu' importe la maitresse?
Qu' importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse_?'"

"De Musset was drunk when he wrote that," said Tristrem. "But whether he
was drunk or sober, I don't agree with him. I don't agree with him at
all. It is the speech of a man who can think himself in love over and
over again, and who discovers in the end that through all his affairs he
has loved no one but himself."

All of which Mr. Yorke pooh-poohed in the civilest manner, and when
Tristrem had finished his little speech, expounded the principles of
love as they are formulated in the works of a German metaphysician,
supporting them as he did so with such clarity and force of argument
that Tristrem, vanquished but unconvinced, left him in disgust.

The next day they were at Liverpool. In the confusion that is incidental
to every debarcation Tristrem had had no opportunity of exchanging a
word with his _vis-a-vis_. But in the custom-house he caught sight of
her, and went forward to bid her good-bye.

"Good-bye," she answered, when he had done so, and putting out her hand,
she looked