Beneath the beak I see the nose, The poetry beneath the prose, The figure 'neath the adipose. And so I sadly turn away: How _can_ I love a clod of clay, Doomed to grow earthlier day by day? Vain, vain the hope from Fate to flee, What special Providence for me? I know that what hath been will be. [Illustration: _The Present and the Future._] Lillie and Silverdale looked at each other. "Well, but," said Lillie at last, "according to this he refused you, not you him. Our rules----" "You mistake me," interrupted Winifred Woodpecker. "When the first fit of anguish was over, I saw my Frank was right, and I have refused all the offers I have had since--five in all. It would not be fair to a lover to chain him to a beauty so transient. In ten or twenty years from now I shall go the way of all flesh. Under such circumstances is not marriage a contract entered into under false pretences? There is no chance of the law of this country allowing a time-limit to be placed in the contract; celibacy is the only honest policy for a woman." Involuntarily Lillie's hand seized the candidate's and gripped it sympathetically. She divined a sister soul. "You teach me a new point of view," she said, "a finer shade of ethical feeling." Silverdale groaned inwardly; he saw a new weapon going into the anti-hymeneal armory, and the Old Maids' Club on the point of being strengthened by the accession of its first member. "The law will have to accommodate itself to these finer shades," pursued Lillie energetically. "It is a rusty machine out of harmony with the age. Science has discovered that the entire physical organism is renewed every seven years, and yet the law calmly goes on assuming that the new man and the new woman are still bound by the contract of their predecessors and still possess the good-will of the original partnership. It seems to me if the short lease principle demanded by physiology is not to be conceded, there should at any rate be provincial and American rights in marriage as well as London rights. In the metropolis the matrimonial contract should hold good with A, in the country with B, neither party infringing the other's privileges, in accordance with theatrical analogy." "That is a literal latitudinarianism in morals you will never get the world to agree to," laughed Lord Silverdale. "At least not in theory; we cannot formally sanction theatrical practice." "Do not laugh," said Lillie. "Law must be brought more in touch with life." "Isn't it rather _vice versâ_? Life must be brought more in touch with law. However, if Miss Woodpecker feels these fine ethical shades, won't she be ineligible?" "How so?" said the President in indignant surprise. "By our second rule every candidate must be beautiful and undertake to continue so." Poor little Lillie drooped her head.