"Oh, please, I always skip that," laughed Lillie. "I know that two lovers cannot walk in a lane without the author seeing the sunset, which is the last thing in the world the lovers see. But when the sky begins to look black, I always begin to skip." "Forgive me. I didn't mean to do it. Remember I'm an habitual art-critic. I thought I was describing a harmony of Whistler's or a movement from a sonata. It shall not occur again. To the heroine enter the hero--shabby, close-cropped, pale. Their eyes meet. He is thunderstruck to find the heroine a woman; blushes, stammers, and offers to go away. Struck by something of innate refinement in his manner, she presses him to avow the object of his visit. At last, in dignified language, infinitely touching in its reticence, he confesses he called on Mr. Frank Maddox, the writer he admires so much, to ask a little pecuniary help. He is starving. Original, isn't it, to have your hero hungry in the first chapter? He speaks vaguely of having ambitions which, unless he goes under in the struggle for existence may some day be realized. There are so many men in London like that. However, the heroine is moved by his destitute condition and sitting down to her desk, she writes out a note, folds it up and gives it to him. 'There!' she says, 'there's a prescription against starvation.' 'But how am I to take it?' he asked. 'It must be taken before breakfast, the first thing in the morning,' she replied, 'to the editor of the _Moon_. Give him the note; he will change it for you. Don't mention my name.' [Illustration: "_There's a prescription against starvation._"] "He thanked me and withdrew." "And what was in the note?" asked Lillie curiously. "I can't quite remember. But something of this sort. 'The numerous admirers of Frank Maddox will be gratified to hear that she has in the press a volume of essays on the part played by color-blindness in the symphonic movements of the time. The great critic is still in town but leaves for Torquay next Tuesday.' For that the editor of the _Moon_ gave him half-a-crown." "Do you call that charity?" said Lillie, astonished. "Certainly. Charity begins at home. Do many people give charity except to advertise themselves? Philanthropy by paragraph is a perquisite of fame. Why, I have a pensioner who comes in for all my _Acadæum_ paragraphs. That _Moon_ part saved our hero from starvation. Years afterwards I learnt he had frittered away two-pence in having his hair cut." "It seems strange for a starving man to get his hair cut," said Lillie.