"I think," said Fred, laughingly, "that you will appreciate the mood in which I once wrote a preface. I planned a great metaphysical and philosophical work--I was a good deal younger than I am now--and the preface was to be, 'As to the originality of these ideas, I have nothing more to say than that I do not remember that they have ever been printed with my name on the title-page.' Of course, after that declaration, I felt at liberty to take any thing I wanted from any where; but, unluckily, my book never got beyond the preface." "I'm glad you had the sense to stop there," declared Arthur. "I forgive the preface, but I could never have forgiven the book." Helen rose from her seat at the piano and turned up the gas a little. The effect for which the light had been lowered was secured, and it was better, she recognized, to give to her singing a certain isolation, which must be done before the conversation became so general that the change from gloom to light would not be noticed. She wore that evening a gray silk with black lace, a slight turning away showing the whiteness of her beautiful throat. Her jewels were cats'-eyes. "Do you wear your cats'-eyes in honor of the cat-headed deity of the Pagans, Mrs. Greyson?" Rangely asked, as she paused near his chair, watching a burner which seemed disposed to flicker. "No," returned she, smiling. "I am no follower of your Pasht; a goddess of 'winged-words' attracts me less than a deity whose province is the sacred sphere of silence. My dress is of Mr. Fenton's designing. He is deeply versed in the subject of clothes. I even suspect him of being the true author of _'Sartor Resartus.'_" "That brings up my pet abomination," Fenton observed, with emphasis. "I do hate Carlyle. I've even lain awake nights to think how I'd like to pound his head. The self-conceited, self-centered, self-adoring old humbug! He was the sham _par excellence_ of the nineteenth century, this century of shams." "It's something to be at the top of the heap in anything," interpolated Herman, "even in shams." "The trouble with Carlyle," Fenton continued, "besides his enormous egotism, was that he never got beyond the whim that the truth is something absolute. He could not abide the idea that it is merely a relative thing and must be treated as such. If he'd got above the mass of cloudy vapor he called truth, he might have gained a glimpse of real sunlight; but his aggressive self-conceit clogged his wings. Don't you recognize that a lie is often truer than the truth?" he ran on, sitting up in his chair and speaking more rapidly; "that where the truth will often produce an erroneous impression, a lie will convey a correct one? that to be true to the spirit it is often necessary to violate the letter?" "Your patron saint should be the god of falsehood," Helen said lightly. "I fear your allegiance to Pasht is not very sincere."