her house one day that I met Charles Strickland's wife. Miss Waterford was giving a tea-party, and her small room was more than usually full. Everyone seemed to be talking, and I, sitting in s

Strickland," she said. "Sh

s she do?

ickland was a well-known writer I thought it as

er eyes demurely to give g

. You've only got to roar a

n she invited members of it to her house if they showed an appreciation of her talent and entertained with proper lavishness. She hel

r, overlooking the unfinished cathedral, and because we lived in the same neighbourhood we felt friendly disposed to one another. The Army and Navy Stores are a bond o

her maturer years, which tended to high heels and Paris frocks, wore a new hat. It put her in high spirits. I had never heard her more malicious about our common friends. Mrs. Jay, aware that impropriety is the soul of wit, made observations in tones hardly above a whisper that might well have tinged the snowy tablecloth with a rosy hue. Richard Twining bubbled over with quaint absurdities, and George Road, conscious that he need not exhibit a brilliancy which was almost a by-word, opened his mouth only to put food into it. Mrs. Strickland

een curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Mor

erford, and the fine day and her new hat

very nice pa

? I told her that if she wanted

I answered. "But why

rd shrugged

her simple, poor dear, and she thinks we're all wonderful. After all, it pl

most part are more interested in the author than in his book, in the painter than in his pictures), and she invented a world of the imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never acquired in the world of every day. When she came to know writers it was like adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the other side of the footlights. She saw them dramatically, and really seemed herself to live a lar

Mr. Strickla

the city. I believe he's a

y good f

But she doesn't often have people to dinner. He's very quiet

e women mar

gent men won't m

ort to this, so I asked if M

y and a girl. They

sted, and we began to