not courage enough to open the grave of the martyred dead. Did
you hear me when you came here? I have an immense imagination. It runs
riot at times. It makes an actor of me. I play the parts of all the
heroes that ever lived. I feel their characters. I merge myself in their
individualities. For the time I _am_ the man I fancy myself to be. I
can't help it. I am obliged to do it. If I restrained my imagination
when the fit is on me, I should go mad. I let myself loose. It lasts
for hours. It leaves me with my energies worn out, with my sensibilities
frightfully acute. Rouse any melancholy or terrible associations in me
at such times, and I am capable of hysterics, I am capable of screaming.
You heard me scream. You shall _not_ see me in hysterics. No, Mrs.
Valeria--no, you innocent reflection of the dead and gone--I would not
frighten you for the world. Will you come here to-morrow in the daytime?
I have got a chaise and a pony. Ariel, my delicate Ariel, can drive. She
shall call at Mamma Macallan's and fetch you. We will talk to-morrow,
when I am fit for it. I am dying to hear you. I will be fit for you
in the morning. I will be civil, intelligent, communicative, in the
morning. No more of it now. Away with the subject--the too exciting, the
too interesting subject! I must compose myself or my brains will explode
in my head. Music is the true narcotic for excitable brains. My harp! my
harp!"

He rushed away in his chair to the far end of the room, passing Mrs.
Macallan as she returned to me, bent on hastening our departure.

"Come!" said the old lady, irritably. "You have seen him, and he has
made a good show of himself. More of him might be tiresome. Come away."

The chair returned to us more slowly. Miserrimus Dexter was working it
with one hand only. In the other he held a harp of a pattern which I had
hitherto only seen in pictures. The strings were few in number, and the
instrument was so small that I could have held it easily on my lap.
It was the ancient harp of the pictured Muses and the legendary Welsh
bards.

"Good-night, Dexter," said Mrs. Macallan.

He held up one hand imperatively.

"Wait!" he said. "Let her hear me sing." He turned to me. "I decline to
be indebted to other people for my poetry and my music," he went on. "I
compose my own poetry and my own music. I improvise. Give me a moment to
think. I will improvise for You."

He closed his eyes and rested his head on the frame of the harp. His
f