The topic was one of my favourite topics of conversation, but I didn't at all feel on this occasion that it was I who was speaking. No, it was the Truth shining through me; the light of the Revelation which I had been chosen to proclaim and blazon to the world. No wonder they were all impressed by my moving tones and gestures; no wonder even the fastidious lady whom it was most difficult to please kept watching me with almost ecstatic attention. As a cloud may obscure the sun in his glory, so from some morass of memory arose a tiny mist of words to darken my mind for a moment. I brushed them aside; they had no meaning. Sunning myself in the mirror of those eyes, never, for a moment, could I credit that devil-suggested explanation of their gaze. Oh, no! that phrase I had heard, I had heard, was a nonsense phrase; the words, 'She mimics you to perfection,' were nothing but a bit of unintelligible jabber. ABOVE THE CLOUDS 'I do so hate gossip,' she murmured. 'How I hate it too!' I heard myself exclaim. 'There is so much that is good and noble in human nature; why not talk of that?' 'Why not indeed?' I sighed. 'I always feel that it is one's own fault if one dislikes people, or finds them boring.' 'How I agree with you!' I cried sincerely. 'But people are nowadays so cynical--they sneer at everything that makes life worth living--Love, Faith, Friendship--' 'And yet those very names are so lovely that even when used in mockery they shed a radiance--they shine like stars.' 'How beautifully you put it! I have so enjoyed our talk.' I had enjoyed it too, and felt all the better for it, only a little giddy and out of breath, as if I had been up in a balloon. THE BUBBLE Walking home at night, troubled by the world's affairs, and with the National Debt crushing down my weak shoulders, I sometimes allow my Thoughts an interlude of solace. From the jar in which I keep my vanity bottled, I remove the cork; out rushes that friendly Jinn and swells up and fills the sky. I walk on lightly through another world, a world in which I cut a very different figure. I shall not describe that exquisite, evanescent universe; even for me 'tis but the bubble of a moment; I soon snuff it out, or of itself it melts in the thin air. CAUTION With all that I know about life, all this cynical and sad knowledge of what happens and must happen, all the experience and caution and disillusion stored and packed in the uncanny, cold, grey matter of my cerebrum--with all this inside my head, how can I ever dream of banging it against the Stars? DESIRES