t, `zealous
arrival' is not the julep in action: it is a triumph of
paraphrase."

"I wish you'd let Joe take you back to bed," said Richard.

"Always bent on thoughts of the flesh," observed the other sadly.
"Beds are for bodies, and I am become a thing of spirit. My soul
is grateful a little for your care of its casing. You behold, I am
generous: I am able to thank my successor to Carmen!"

Lindley's back stiffened. "Vilas!"

"Spare me your protests." The younger man waved his hand
languidly. "You wish not to confer upon this subject----"

"It's a subject we'll omit," said Richard.

His companion stopped swinging, allowed the hammock to come to
rest; his air of badinage fell from him; for the moment he seemed
entirely sober; and he spoke with gentleness. "Mr. Lindley, if you
please, I am still a gentleman--at times."

"I beg your pardon," said Richard quickly.

"No need of that!" The speaker's former careless and boisterous
manner instantly resumed possession. "You must permit me to speak
of a wholly fictitious lady, a creature of my wanton fancy, sir,
whom I call Carmen. It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul
of some remarks I have long wished to address to your excellent
self."

"Oh, all right," muttered Richard, much annoyed.

"Let us imagine," continued Mr. Vilas, beginning to swing again,
"that I thought I had won this Carmen----"

Lindley uttered an exclamation, shifted his position in his chair,
and fixed a bored attention upon the passing vehicles in the
glimpse of the street afforded between the house and the
shrubberies along the side fence. The other, without appearing to
note his annoyance, went on, cheerfully:

"She was a precocious huntress: early in youth she passed through
the accumulator stage, leaving it to the crude or village belle to
rejoice in numbers and the excitement of teasing cubs in the
bear-pit. It is the nature of this imagined Carmen to play
fiercely with one imitation of love after another: a man thinks he
wins her, but it is merely that she has chosen him--for a while.
And Carmen can have what she chooses; if the man exists who could
show her that she cannot, she would follow him through the devil's
dance; but neither you nor I would be that man, my dear sir. We
assume that Carmen's eyes have been mine--her heart is another
matter--and that she has grown weary of my somewhat Sicilian
manner of looking into them, and, following her nature and the law
of periodici