"Good-evening, Mrs. Gerome; I hope I do not interrupt you." Dr. Grey removed the embroidery to the table, and seated himself in the sofa corner. "Good evening. Interruption argues occupation and absorbed attention, and the term is not applicable to me. I who live as vainly, as uselessly, as fruitlessly, as some fakir twirling his thumbs and staring at his beard, have little right to call anything an interruption. My existence here is as still, as stagnant, as some pool down yonder in the sedge which last week's waves left among the sand hillocks, and your visits are like pebbles thrown into it, creating transient ripples and circles." "You have gone back to the God of your aesthetic idolatry," said he, touching the "Liber Studiorum." "Yes, because 'Beauty pitches her tents before him,' and his pencil is more potent in conjuring visions that enchant my wearied mind, than Jemschid's goblet or Iskander's mirror." "But why stand afar off, trusting to human and fallible interpreters, when it is your privilege to draw near and dwell in the essence of the only real and divine beauty?" "Better reverence it behind a veil, than suffer like Semele. I know my needs, and satisfy them fully. Once my heart was as bare of adoration as Egypt's tawny sands of crystal rain-pools; but looking into the realm of nature and of art, I chose the religion of the beautiful, and said to my famished soul, 'From every channel thro' which Beauty runs, To fertilize the world with lovely things, I will draw freely, and be satisfied.'" "This morbid sentimentality, this sickly gasping system of aesthetics, _soi-disant_ 'Religion of the Beautiful,' is the curse of the age,--is a vast, universal vampire sucking the life from humanity. Like other idolatries it may arrogate the name of 'Religion,' but it is simply downright pagan materialism, and its votaries of the nineteenth century should look back two thousand years, and renew the _Panathenoea_. The ancient Greek worship of aesthetics was a proud and pardonable system, replete with sublime images; but the idols of your emasculated creed are yellow-haired women with straight noses,--are purple clouds and moon-silvered seas,--and physical beauty constitutes their sole excellence. Lovely landscapes and perfect faces are certainly entitled to a liberal quota of earnest admiration; but a religion that contents itself with merely material beauty, differs in nothing but nomenclature from the pagan worship of Cybele, Venus, and Astarte." A chill smile momentarily brightened Mrs. Gerome's features, and turning towards her visitor, she answered slowly,--