I must go because they do not vant me, but you vill stay and listen.
There is here no such voice. Velvet! Honey! Sh! sh!" and he went the way
of dreams.

The man who stayed looked long through the curtains.

As a swing droops slow and slower, as the ripples fade from a stone
thrown in the stream, the song of the Princess softened and crooned and
hushed. Now it was a rich breath, a resonant thread.

Flow gently, sweet Afton----

The man stepped across the room and sank below the General at her feet.
With her finger on her lips she turned her eyes to his and looked deep
into them. He caught his breath with a sob, and wrapping his arm about
her as he knelt, hid his face on her lap, against the General. She laid
her hand on his head, across the warm little body, and patted it
tenderly. Around them lay the sleepers; the General's soft breath was in
their ears. The man lifted his head and looked adoringly at the
Princess; her hand caressed his cheek, but her eyes looked beyond him
into the future.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS BY ELLEN TERRY]

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND WITH A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

It is only human to make comparisons between American and English
institutions, although they are likely to turn out as odious as the
proverb says! The first institution in America that distressed me was
the steam heat. It is far more manageable now than it was, both in
hotels and theatres, because there are more individual heaters. But how
I suffered from it at first I cannot describe. I used to feel dreadfully
ill, and when we could not turn the heat off at the theatre, the play
always went badly. My voice was affected, too. At Toledo, once, it
nearly went altogether. Then the next night, after a good fight, we got
the theatre cool, and the difference to the play was extraordinary. I
was in my best form, feeling well and jolly!

If I did not like steam heat, I loved the ice which is such a feature at
American meals. Everything is served on ice. I took kindly to their
dishes--their cookery, at its best, is better than the French--and I
sadly missed planked shad, terrapin, and the oyster--at its best and at
its cheapest in America--when I returned to England.

_Travelling in America_

The American hotels seemed luxurious even in 1883; but it only takes ten
years there for an hotel to be quite done, to become old-fashioned and
u