voice behind him startled him.

'Can a poor cockney artist venture himself along this timber without
falling in?'

Lancelot turned.

'Come out to me, and if you stumble, the naiads will rise out of
their depths, and "hold up their pearled wrists" to save their
favourite.'

The artist walked timidly out along the beams, and sat down beside
Lancelot, who shook him warmly by the hand.

'Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely enthusiasms and symbolisms!
Expound to me, now, the meaning of that water-lily leaf and its
grand simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in the back eddy.'

'Oh, I am too amused to philosophise. The fair Argemone has just
been treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth philippic
against my unoffending beard.'

'Why, what fault can she find with such a graceful and natural
ornament?'

'Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. As it is, she
considers me only "intelligent-looking." If the beard were away, my
face, she says, would be "so refined!" And, I suppose, if I was
just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating
under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek, peaking simper, like your
starved Romish saints, I should be "so spiritual!" And if, again,
to complete the climax, I did but shave my head like a Chinese, I
should be a model for St. Francis himself!'

'But really, after all, why make yourself so singular by this said
beard?'

'I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a man has no right to be
ashamed of the mark of manhood. Oh, that one or two of your
Protestant clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal men, would have
the courage to get up into the pulpit in a long beard, and testify
that the very essential idea of Protestantism is the dignity and
divinity of man as God made him! Our forefathers were not ashamed
of their beards; but now even the soldier is only allowed to keep
his moustache, while our quill-driving masses shave themselves as
close as they can; and in proportion to a man's piety he wears less
hair, from the young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the
Popish priest who shaves his crown!'

'What do you say, then, to cutting off nuns' hair?'

'I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeism always ends in
sheer indecency. Those Papists have forgotten what woman was made
for, and therefore, they have forgotten that a woman's hair is her
glory, for it was given to her for a covering: as says you