"Think so? The 'upper ten' quite condone that sort of thing in their own set now-a-days. It is all right. If a lady has lovers, and her husband beams benevolence on the situation what can be said? Nothing. How very tender your conscience is, Geoffrey!" I sat silent, thinking. My companion lit a cigarette and offered me one. I took it mechanically without lighting it. "I made a mistake this evening,"--he went on--"I should not have sung that 'Last Love-song.' The fact is, the words were written by one of her ladyship's former admirers, a man who was something of a poet in his way,--and she had an idea that she was the only person living who had ever seen the lines. She wanted to know if I knew the man who composed them, and I was able to say that I did--very intimately. I was just explaining how it was, and why I knew him so well, when the distressing attack of convulsions came on, and finished our conversation." "She looked horrible!" I said. "The paralysed Helen of a modern Troy? Yes,--her countenance at the last was certainly not attractive. Beauty combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eye and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is Nature's revenge on the outraged body,--and do you know, Eternity's revenge on the impure Soul is extremely similar?" "What do you know about it?" I said, smiling in spite of myself as I looked at his fine face, expressive of perfect health and splendid intellectuality--"Your absurd fancies about the soul are the only traces of folly I discover in you." "Really? Well I am glad I have something of the fool in my disposition,--foolishness being the only quality that makes wisdom possible. I confess I have odd, very odd notions about the soul." "I will excuse them--" I said, laughing--God forgive me, in my own insensate blind conceit,--the while he regarded me fixedly--"In fact I will excuse anything for the sake of your voice. I do not flatter you, Lucio,--you sing like an angel." "Don't use impossible comparisons;"--he replied--"Have you ever heard an angel sing?" "Yes!" I answered smiling--"I have,--this very night!" He turned deadly pale.