“Thank you,” said Sylvester; “you have given me a lucid solution of my difficulty.” The young man smiled deprecatingly. “Pardon me. I try to be an artist in words, and lucidity is so brutal and commonplace. Do you read Mallarmé?” “No,” said Sylvester. “When I want wholesome unintelligibility I read Rabelais.” Urquhart looked pained. There was a slight pause. “Fond of bicycling?” asked Sylvester, cheerily. Again came the pitying smile over the face of the young semi-millionaire. “I know so little of the things one does with one's body,” he said. “Better learn,” said Sylvester. “Capital exercise. Shakes up your liver, you know.” Here he was carried off by Lady Milmo, who was dying to introduce him to somebody. “Do you understand all the things they talk about here?” he asked. Lady Milmo regarded him with a twinkling eye. “God bless your soul, no,” she said. “I suppose they're all exceedingly clever?” Lady Milmo stood upon the points of her toes and looked around, as if to take in all her guests in one comprehensive glance. Then she half whispered into his ear,--“They've all got to talk like that to one another for the sake of their reputations. But I go round and talk to each in turn of their cooks or their stomachs, according to sex,--and they love it!” “Well, I'd sooner talk to you, Lady Milmo,--though not of my stomach,--than to any of these people,” said Sylvester, with a laugh. “Can't you steal five minutes?” Lady Milmo spied a couple of vacant chairs in a near corner, and sitting down on one motioned Sylvester to the other. Then she smiled. She was a kind-hearted woman, and in spite of her false air of youth possessed much charm of manner. “I suppose you want to talk about the engagement!” she said. “No, not particularly. What do you think of this Colony, where Ella proposes to exile herself?” “Utter rubbish,” said Lady Milmo. Sylvester expressed surprise. “I was under the impression that you were one of its fervent propagandists.” “Oh, one must do something,” she replied inconsequently. “One bubble is just as good as another to blow during the season. Whether it's providing eau de cologne for released criminals, or founding a Garden of Eden for unsuccessful poets, it all comes to the same thing in the end. You look puzzled. Well, what is one person's amusement is another's bewilderment.” “But all these promoters--Ella and Roderick--they believe in it?” “Oh, yes, they believe in it. People will believe in anything,--Mr. Urquhart's new religion, for instance. But the Art Colony is rubbish. Don't put a penny in it. I haven't. It may be a romantic toy for Ella to play with for the first two years of her married life, but then she will come back and settle down to a reasonable existence. You won't give me away, will you?” Sylvester promised, and a few moments later found himself standing alone, wrapped in gloomy wonder at the inanity of life. A voice roused him from his meditation. “Good-evening, Sylvester.”