, with clasped hands
and a step backward, "ca vous donne tout a fait l'air d'une dame de
Nattier."

Madame took the hand-glass, and did not deny that she was eblouissante.
If madame, suggested Monsieur Cadron, had but a little dress a la Marie
Antoinette? Madame had, cried madame's maid, running to fetch one with
little pink flowers and green leaves on an ecru ground. Could any
coiffure or any gown be more appropriate for an entertainment at which
Clio was to preside?

It is obviously impossible that a masterpiece should be executed under
the rules laid down by convention. It would never be finished. Mr.
Chiltern was coming to lunch, and it was not the first time. On her
appearance in the doorway he halted abruptly in his pacing of the
drawing-room, and stared at her.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," she said.

"It was worth it," he said. And they entered the dining room. A subdued,
golden-green light came in through the tall glass doors that opened out
on the little garden which had been Mrs. Forsythe's pride. The scent of
roses was in the air, and a mass of them filled a silver bowl in the
middle of the table. On the dark walls were Mrs. Forsythe's precious
prints, and above the mantel a portrait of a thin, aristocratic gentleman
who resembled the poet Tennyson. In the noonday shadows of a recess was a
dark mahogany sideboard loaded with softly gleaming silver--Honora's.
Chiltern sat down facing her. He looked at Honora over the roses,--and
she looked at him. A sense of unreality that was, paradoxically, stronger
than reality itself came over her, a sense of fitness, of harmony. And
for the moment an imagination, ever straining at its leash, was allowed
to soar. It was Chiltern who broke the silence.

"What a wonderful bowl!" he said.

"It has been in my father's family a great many years. He was very fond
of it," she answered, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she reached
over and set the bowl aside.

"That's better," he declared, "much as I admire the bowl, and the roses."

She coloured faintly, and smiled. The feast of reason that we are
impatiently awaiting is deferred. It were best to attempt to record the
intangible things; the golden-green light, the perfumes, and the faint
musical laughter which we can hear if we listen. Thalia's laughter,
surely, not Clio's. Thalia, enamoured with such a theme, has taken the
stage herself--and as Vesta, goddess of hearths. It was Vesta whom they
felt to be presi