either cheek, and catching the eye of our old hostess who, the night’s work done, had joined her guests, knitting in hand, I would nod my response. For those eyes, so human, tolerant, and wise, said as plainly as any words could, “What children those men are! what ‘blaguers!’” then draw back my chair, and place it near to hers; when we would talk, sober women’s talk—reasonable and profitable—of the cost of food under the new tariff, and how the spaghetti had been cooked in that fresh fashion at dinner. And if I asked the man to the right of that big man—the German there—for a little tarragon for the vinegar, he would surely give it, for he had a large garden, and then the Signora would present me with a bottle. And of the Bambina, what gave it that little cough—cigarette smoke! But he had breathed little else since he was born! Someone would perhaps bang a fist down on the table, and fling the single word “separation” like a lighted torch among tinder, or the big German make bragging assertions as to the superiority of Goethe over Shakespeare. One caught the choicest morsels from that week’s _Bulletin_ with which the art-students regaled each other, for the _Bulletin_ is the bible of the Australian Bohemian. Or the murmur of the perennial discussion on the Armenian question, in which the big Turk ensnared all newcomers; less effective than it might have been owing to the fact that in moments of excitement he forgot all the little English that he ever had, and reverted to his mother-tongue, which no one else at table could understand. But all this was mere sound and fury, leaving our little oasis of quietude quite untouched. Then an immense man, who looked like a Portuguese, but was in reality a half-caste Chinaman, would most likely draw his chair up to mine, and join in our talk of the Bambina, with some strange lore regarding the souls of children, and that little moment when they remember all of the life they have lived before, while the old woman dropped her knitting on her knee and listened open-eyed, till he drifted off to other subjects—art and literature for the most part. He had never been out of Australasia, and yet there seemed to be no historical spot in Europe which he did not know intimately, not a half-forgotten verse that he could not finish for me, not a writer whose works he had not only read, but whose place in literature and whose influence he clearly realized. And then sometimes he would quote Chinese poetry, accompanying it with a running translation which was a delight to the ear. One evening I remember some insolent, loud-voiced remarks on a “White Australia” were flipped down the table in his direction, but he only shrugged his great shoulders. “We shall see,” he said; “after all it is the best who win.”