Ah, poor Arthur, no doctor ever yet of soul or body but gave a biassed diagnosis of a pretty woman’s soul. How easy it is to weave romances over soft gold hair! How natural to read poetry and lost loves in the light of lovely eyes that look so sweetly now in yours! So good Bishop Berkeley showed us that we mortals see but an image of external things, an inference from the sensation of our own retina; and we silly men, like idolaters, worship but the image we ourselves create. The lily of the field still draws us, not the potato-flower, worthy vegetable. And we fondly assume that the lily cares nothing for its vestment; that it toils not, nor spins, and has its eye upon the stars alone. Arthur now really felt that he was a friend of Flossie Gower’s. His favorite poems were all hers, and she quoted from many of them, with sighs. She had shown to him what the cynic world had never seen, the regrets and longings that lay beneath the pearls and laces that clothed her heart’s casement; the true woman, not the fashionable figure known to others. How pleasant it was, to have a friend like her; one whose own life was over, and had all the more sympathy, for that, with lives of others. She asked him to come and see her whenever he liked; and Arthur thought how comforting it would be, to go to this woman for sympathy and advice, so much older than he, and yet so young at heart! So seriously did Arthur think all this, that it quite jarred upon him when Charlie met him on his return and boisterously complimented him. “Well, old man, you are going it, and no mistake!” (Mrs. Gower’s name was pronounced _Go-er_, which gave opportunity for endless puns.) “I say, old fellow, you come down fresh from the pastures like what-d’ye-callem--Endymion--Adonis, or the other masher--and sail to windward of the whole squadron!”