... "You see, it's this way," explained Alfred years afterwards to some of the newspaper boys around a table at Lüchow's. "Poor Ulick never had the staying power. Brilliant? Yes--after a fashion. His mind was a crazy-quilt. Mince pie and Chopin. Can you beat it? He had the cosmopolitan bug, but he soon found out that the North American climate withered the Flowers of Evil of his Baudelaire and all the other decadent ideas and poetry he brought over with him. Poisonous honey from France--what? Our native air is too tonic for such stuff. His Fleurs du Mal wilted. So did he. He hadn't the guts to last. After his paralytic stroke at Dora's he was sent back to Paris, but he didn't live many years. He and his brother Oswald died within a few months of each other. Old man Invern didn't only bequeath them money--he probably gave them something worse. You know. Our old enemy, Spirochaeta Pallida, I suspect. Otherwise, why did Ulick crumble after one real debauch? Their money--oh, it reverted to the Bartletts, cousins of the boys. Was he engaged to Mona Milton? That's news. I never heard of it and I was pretty thick with her family. You know she married Paul Godard, and it turned out a happy match--at least for her. She has a houseful of children. A blooming matron. But self-righteous now; turns up her nose at 'fallen women.' I visit there every now and then. Paul isn't a bad sort. He used to be a loose fish, and now he wears slippers and goes to bed early. Everything passes--even regret. Strange! Ulick never drank--except that time--or smoked--and he's gone. Mona doesn't mention his name. Her brother! He got into a woman scrape here--never mind the lady's name--scandale oblige! He was fished out of the gutter and sent away to repent in some monastery out West. After he became a priest he was exported as a missionary to China. He was a born preacher. I think he drove Ulick to drink with his preaching--that's what Istar says. Istar? Thank you, she's very well. She's composed of harps, anvils and granite. The steely limit! A heartless, ungrateful creature. Fly-blown caviar.... Yes, a wonderful artiste. But that doesn't always mean a civilised human. Yet, singers, actors, artists are not a whit worse as to morals than your business men, politicians, your shoemakers or your pious folk. The artists get found out quicker--that's all. I see her daily--I've known her nearly twenty years--and she grows wickeder every year. She is the great singing harlot of modern Babylon, a vocal Scarlet Woman. I'm sick of her. I've told her so. She expects me to be her fetch-and-carry. Not for thirty cents, d'ye hear? Why, boys, she's too mean to play the horses--and that's a bad sign. I'm tired, I'm going home. You can scandalise when my back is turned. But remember one thing--I'll live to write Easter's obituary in the "Clarion" perhaps write the epitaph on her headstone. As for music, I'm weary of it--opera in particular. When it isn't silly