'Good-bye, Mr. Freydon,' said Mabel Foster as she gave me her softly gloved little hand over the cab door. And, from that moment, I was her slave; only realising some few minutes later that I had been so unpardonably rude as never even to have glanced in Miss Prinsep's direction, to say nothing of bidding her good-bye. Miss Foster's was a well recognised and conventional kind of beauty, very telling to my inexperienced eyes, and richly suggestive of romance. Her eyes were large, dark, and, as the novelists say, 'melting.' Her face was a perfectly regular oval, having a clear olive complexion, with warm hints of subdued colour in it. Her lips were most provocative, and all about the edges of that dark cloud, her hair, the light played fitfully through a lattice of stray tendrils. A very pretty picture indeed, Miss Foster was perfectly conscious of her charms, and a mistress of coquettishness in her use of them. A true child of pleasure-loving Sydney, she might have posed with very little preparation as a Juliet or a Desdemona, and to my youthful fancy carried about with her the charming gaiety and romantic tenderness of the most delightful among Boccaccio's ladies. (Sydney was just then beginning to be referred to by writers as the Venice of the Pacific, and I was greatly taken with the comparison.) A week or so later, I was honoured by an invitation to dine at my chief's house one Saturday night; and from that point onward my visits became frequent, my subjugation unquestioning and complete. This was the one brief period of my youth in which I flung away prudence and became youthfully extravagant, not merely in thought but in the expenditure of money. I suppose fully half my salary, for some time, was given to the purchase of sweets and flowers, pretty booklets and the like, for Mabel Foster; and, of the remainder of my earnings, the tailor took heavier toll than he had ever done before. For example, when that first invitation to dinner reached me--on a Monday--I had never had my arms through the sleeves of a dress-coat. Mr. Smith kindly offered the loan of his time-honoured evening suit, pointing out, I dare say truly, that such garments were being 'cut very full just now.' But, no; I felt that the occasion demanded an epoch-marking plunge on my part; and to this end Mr. Smith was good enough to introduce me to his own tailor, through whom, as I understood, I could obtain the benefit of some sort of trade reduction in price, by virtue of Mr. Smith's one time position as a commercial traveller.