"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!" "Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passe_: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago." "The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage a trois_. And I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence." "Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully. "Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming of Dawn_." Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said he, in parenthesis. "I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I will!" I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table. "H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her grandchildren terribly in the way." "It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book, that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will."