"Really, Renée, you should not ask such absurd questions. I was so taken up with the dresses that I forgot all about the play. By the way, I have just ordered a frock like Mademoiselle Patel's for myself. You must come with me and see it tried on." "Of course, I like pretty frocks, what girl doesn't? But I like a good play ever so much more. I get so carried away with the acting that I never notice what the people wear so long as they are not out of harmony with the play or the music. I went to see Romeo and Juliet for the first time last Saturday, and you can't think how I enjoyed it. But I was so sorry for poor Juliet, and felt drawn to her right away. I even found myself weeping. That speech of Friar Lawrence to her was so fine that I learnt it off by heart as soon as I got home. Of course you know it--don't you, madame," she asked enquiringly. "What was it again? I am afraid I have forgotten it," said madame, who had not the remotest idea of what Renée was talking about. "You must remember, in order to stop her marrying Paris whom she loathed, the Friar gave her a drug to swallow, which he told her would leave her to all appearances dead, and then she would wake up again quite well as soon as the danger was over; you know, it runs like this:-- "Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris; Wednesday is to-morrow; To-morrow night look that thou lie alone Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber: Take thou this vial being then in bed, And this distilled liquor drink thou off: When, presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour: for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease; No warmth, no breath shall testify thou liv'st. The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes: thy eyes' windows fall Like death, when he shuts up the day of Life. Each part, deprived of supple government, Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death: And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death: Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours. And then awake as from a pleasant sleep." "I have often thought," interrupted Delapine who was listening most intently, "how I should like to leave this life, and then after a long sojourn in some other world, to wake up and find myself, like Juliet, once more at home. What countless problems one could solve, problems which have occupied the scientists for years. You cannot imagine, Renée, my intense longing to enter into the unknown and penetrate into the sealed mysteries of Nature. Alas, that exquisite joys should be denied to us, who are the first and last of all things, the Ultima Thule of evolution. I feel sometimes that in some extraordinary way I shall see it, Renée, but how, where, or when is more than I can conceive even in my wildest dreams."