"You mean that in your own case human caprice has been sufficiently constant? I can well believe it." "No," she said; "I only mean that the love of beauty is common to all human beings." "To all living things," corrected Savrola. "It is the love of the plant that produces the flower." "Ah," said the President, "but, though the love of beauty may be constant, beauty itself may change. Look how everything changes: the beauty of one age is not the beauty of the next; what is admired in Africa is hideous in Europe. It is all a matter of opinion, local opinion. Your goddess, Monsieur, has as many shapes as Proteus." "I like change," said the Ambassador. "I regard variability of form as a decided advantage in a goddess. I do not care how many shapes I look at, so long as all are beautiful." "But," interposed Lucile, "you make no distinction between what is beautiful and what we think is beautiful." "There is none," said the President. "In Her Excellency's case there would be none," interposed the Ambassador politely. "What is beauty," said Molara, "but what we choose to admire?" "Do we choose? Have we the power?" asked Savrola. "Certainly," answered the President; "and every year we alter our decisions; every year the fashion changes. Ask the ladies. Look at the fashions of thirty years ago; they were thought becoming then. Observe the different styles of painting that have succeeded each other, or of poetry, or of music. Besides, Monsieur de Stranoff's goddess, though beautiful to him, might not be so to another." "I regard that also as a real advantage; you make me more enamoured with my religion each moment. I do not worship my ideals for the _reclamé_," said the Ambassador with a smile. "You look at the question from a material point of view." "Material rather than moral," said Lady Ferrol. "But in the spirit-worship of my goddess the immorality is immaterial. Besides, if you say that our tastes are always changing, it seems to me that constancy is the essence of my religion." "That is a paradox which we shall make you explain," said Molara. "Well, you say I change each day, and my goddess changes too. To-day I admire one standard of beauty, to-morrow another, but when to-morrow comes I am no longer the same person. The molecular structure of my brain is altered; my ideas have changed; my old self has perished, loving its own ideal; the renovated _ego_ starts life with a new one. It is all a case of wedded till death." "You are not going to declare that constancy is a series of changes? You may as well assert that motion is a succession of halts." "I am true to the fancy of the hour." "You express my views in other words. Beauty depends on human caprice, and changes with the times."