Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" into Jenny's. Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip and brilliant _mots_; and then she was one of those women who are like incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and distinction, like a pomander of strange spices. You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their death-song amid the flames. Theophil? Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil. Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper. Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of ear-shot. "How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel. "She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny.