These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then came ‘Stark: A Conte,’ about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula--lacking, I felt, in ‘snap.’ Next, some aphorisms (entitled ‘Aphorismata’ [spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form; and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was rather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any substance at all? It did now occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _I_ was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read ‘L’Apres-midi d’un Faune’ without extracting a glimmer of meaning. Yet Mallarme--of course--was a Master. How was I to know that Soames wasn’t another? There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden perhaps with meanings as deep as Mallarme’s own. I awaited his poems with an open mind. And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a second meeting with him. This was on an evening in January. Going into the aforesaid domino room, I passed a table at which sat a pale man with an open book before him. He looked from his book to me, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I ought to have recognised him. I returned to pay my respects. After exchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, ‘I see I am interrupting you,’ and was about to pass on, but ‘I prefer,’ Soames replied in his toneless voice, ‘to be interrupted,’ and I obeyed his gesture that I should sit down. I asked him if he often read here. ‘Yes; things of this kind I read here,’ he answered, indicating the title of his book--‘The Poems of Shelley.’ ‘Anything that you really’--and I was going to say ‘admire?’ But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so, for he said, with unwonted emphasis, ‘Anything second-rate.’ I had read little of Shelley, but ‘Of course,’ I murmured, ‘he’s very uneven.’ ‘I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That’s why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He’s tolerable here.’ Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames’ laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. ‘What a period!’ he uttered, laying the book down. And ‘What a country!’ he added.