To knock at the door of his own studio; to sit as a guest upon a chair he had painted with his own hands; that was sufficiently strange. To invite formally to dinner—in order not to be merely one of several of her friends and admirers, in order to have a word with her alone—the girl with whom one has talked all night more nights than one could remember: that was stranger still. But to be met at the door, when you came to your studio a little early to escort her to that dinner, by a rather shy startled figure in a scarlet dressing gown well-known to you, but now clasped with firm fingers at her bosom, and asked to wait before the fire while she finished dressing behind the screen at the back, in a tone which cancelled utterly the countless intimacies that you have shared—that was the strangest of all.... Was it any wonder that, having thus achieved the opportunity for a word or two alone with her he should have found it impossible to say any words whatever except such as would be appropriate addressed to a young woman with whom one stood on such a footing? One might talk to her seriously about ideas, or lightly about friends; one might be argumentative or witty; one might pay her compliments, even equivocal and daring compliments, of whose double meaning she would seem unconscious; one might, in short, pay court to her as one might to a hundred others. But as for anything more— Try it and see.... Treat a young woman to whom you are a perfect stranger, with an air of familiar lang syne; show up her airs of reserve as an absurd affectation; stand for no nonsense from her! Do not let her pretend; break down that silly barrier of proud virginal constraint. Remind her that in some previous existence, millions of years ago, she was the docile companion of your pillow. What right has she to that look of a defiant vestal?... Yes, tell her so! Did you think she was yours, that she belonged to you now and henceforth? Well you are mistaken. She belongs to herself. You remember a time when—? Well, she doesn’t remember. Pay your court! Perhaps in another thousand years or so you may get to be fairly well acquainted with her. Not so well acquainted as Tom, who jests with her familiarly, or Billy, whom she pets, or that young painter, of whom she seems quite fond; but she likes you, after a fashion—yes, she even encourages you to persevere. “_Had we but world enough, and time This coyness, lady, were no crime!_” But day after day, in this preposterous fashion, is slipping past; and she says she is going to Los Angeles: and who are you to prevent her? To Felix it bore very much the aspect of ironic comedy. One can often see a joke when one cannot laugh at it. But what, after all, was the point of this particular joke?