"No need of that!" The speaker's former careless and boisterous manner instantly resumed possession. "You must permit me to speak of a wholly fictitious lady, a creature of my wanton fancy, sir, whom I call Carmen. It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul of some remarks I have long wished to address to your excellent self." "Oh, all right," muttered Richard, much annoyed. "Let us imagine," continued Mr. Vilas, beginning to swing again, "that I thought I had won this Carmen----" Lindley uttered an exclamation, shifted his position in his chair, and fixed a bored attention upon the passing vehicles in the glimpse of the street afforded between the house and the shrubberies along the side fence. The other, without appearing to note his annoyance, went on, cheerfully: "She was a precocious huntress: early in youth she passed through the accumulator stage, leaving it to the crude or village belle to rejoice in numbers and the excitement of teasing cubs in the bear-pit. It is the nature of this imagined Carmen to play fiercely with one imitation of love after another: a man thinks he wins her, but it is merely that she has chosen him--for a while. And Carmen can have what she chooses; if the man exists who could show her that she cannot, she would follow him through the devil's dance; but neither you nor I would be that man, my dear sir. We assume that Carmen's eyes have been mine--her heart is another matter--and that she has grown weary of my somewhat Sicilian manner of looking into them, and, following her nature and the law of periodicity which Carmens must bow to, she seeks a cooler gaze and calls Mr. Richard Lindley to come and take a turn at looking. Now, Mr. Richard Lindley is straight as a die: he will not even show that he hears the call until he is sure that I have been dismissed: therefore, I have no quarrel with him. Also, I cannot even hate him, for in my clearer julep vision I see that he is but an interregnum. Let me not offend my friend: chagrin is to be his as it is mine. I was a strong draught, he but the quieting potion our Carmen took to settle it. We shall be brothers in woe some day. Nothing in the universe lasts except Hell: Life is running water; Love, a looking-glass; Death, an empty theatre! That reminds me: as you are not listening I will sing." He finished his drink and lifted his voice hilariously: "The heavenly stars far above her, The wind of the infinite sea, Who know all her perfidy, love her, So why call it madness in me? Ah, why call it madness----" He set his glass with a crash upon the table, staring over his companion's shoulder. "_What_, if you please, is the royal exile who thus seeks refuge in our hermitage?"