Nevertheless, I know it was the 'private' part of the 'Private View' that made me so anxious to go to the Academy on the first day of May this year. The pictures would be there the second day, and the day following, and days indefinitely after that, and for a quarter of a dollar I could choose my own time and circumstances of going to see them. I might, weather permitting, have taken my 'view' of the Academy in the publicity of five or six other people who, like me, would have paid a shilling a-piece to get in; but I found myself preferring the privacy of the five or six hundred who did not pay--preferring it immensely. Besides, I had heard all my life of the 'Private View.' Every year there are special cablegrams about it in our newspapers--who were there, and what they wore--generally to the extent of at least a column and a half. Our special correspondents in London glory in it, and rival each other, adjectivally, in describing it. Lady Torquilin had been talking about it a good deal, too. She said it was 'a thing to see,' and she meant to try to get me an invitation. Lady Torquilin went every year. But when the thirtieth day of April came, Lady Torquilin told me in the evening, after dinner, that she hadn't been able to manage it, and showed me the card upon which the 'President and Members of the Royal Academy of Arts "requested" the pleasure of the company of Lady Torquilin,' only, 'Not transferable.' 'It's very tiresome of them,' said Lady Torquilin, 'to put that on. It means that you positively must not give it to anybody. Otherwise I would have handed it over to you, child, with the greatest pleasure--I don't care a pin's point about going, and you could have gone with the Pastelle-Browns. But there it is!' Of course, nothing would have induced me to take Lady Torquilin's invitation, and deprive her of the pleasure of going; but I pinned her veil at the back, and saw her off down the elevator, next day at two, with an intensity of regret which cannot come often in the course of an ordinary lifetime. I was describing my feelings in a letter, addressed, I think, to Mr. Winterhazel, when, about an hour later, Lady Torquilin appeared again, flushed with exertion, and sank panting into a chair. 'Get ready, child!' said she. 'I'd wear your tailor-made; those stairs will kill me, but there was--no time--to waste on the lift. I can get you in--hurry up your cakes!' 'But am I invited?' I asked. 'Certainly you are--by a Royal Academician in person--so fly!'