"Another distressing feature about Silverplume--indeed, I think about all men--is their continuous capacity for love-making. You know, my dear Miss Dulcimer, with us it is a matter of times and seasons--we are creatures of strange and subtle susceptibilities, sometimes we are in the mood for love and ready to respond to all shades of sentimentality, but at other moments (and these the majority) men's amorous advances jar horribly. Men do not know this. Ever ready to make love themselves they think all moments are the same to us as to them. And of all men, poets are the most prepared to make love at a moment's notice. So that Silverplume himself is almost more trying than his verses." "But after all you need not read them," observed Lillie. "They please him and they do not hurt you. And you have always the consolation of remembering it is not you he loves but the paragon he has evolved from his inner consciousness. Even taking into account his perennial affectionateness, your reason for refusing him seems scarcely strong enough." "Ah, wait a moment--You have not heard the worst! I might perhaps have tolerated his metrical misinterpretations--indeed on my sending him a vigorous protest against the inaccuracies of his last collection (they came out so much more glaringly when brought all together from the various scattered publications to which Silverplume originally contributed them) he sent me back a semi-apologetic explanation thus conceived: "'TO CELIA.' "(You know of course my name is Diana, but that is his way.) "''Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleam Nor sunny glances, For which I weave so oft a dream Of dainty fancies. "''Tis not alone thy witching play Of grace fantastic That makes me chant so oft a lay Encomiastic. "'Both editors and thee I see, Thy face, their purses. I offer heart and soul to thee, To them my verses.' "I was partially mollified by this, for if his poems were not merely complimentary, and he really got paid for them, one might put up with inspiring them. We were reconciled and he took me to a reception at the house of a wealthy friend of his, a fellow-member of the Sonneteers' Society. It was here that I saw a sight that froze my young blood and warned me upon the edge of what a precipice I was standing. When we got into the drawing-room, the first thing we saw was an awful apparition in a corner--a hideous, unkempt, unwashed man in a dressing-gown and slippers, with his eyes rolling wildly and his lips moving rhythmically. It was the host.