He moved his hand and looked up,--his eyes were large and lustrous as the eyes of a beautiful woman. "I was thinking," he said, with a slight sigh--"of the last words I uttered just now,--_things always right themselves_. Curiously enough in art they always do,--no charlatanism or sham lasts with the gods of Parnassus. But in other matters it is different. For instance _I_ shall never right myself! Life is hateful to me at times, as it is to everybody." "Perhaps you are in love?" I said with a smile. He started up. "In love! By all the heavens and all the earths too, that suggestion wakes me with a vengeance! In love! What woman alive do you think could impress _me_ with the notion that she was anything more than a frivolous doll of pink and white, with long hair frequently not her own? And as for the tom-boy tennis-players and giantesses of the era, I do not consider them women at all,--they are merely the unnatural and strutting embryos of a new sex which will be neither male nor female. My dear Tempest, I hate women. So would you if you knew as much about them as I do. They have made me what I am, and they keep me so." "They are to be much complimented then,"--I observed--"You do them credit!" "I do!" he answered slowly--"In more ways than one!" A faint smile was on his face, and his eyes brightened with that curious jewel-like gleam I had noticed several times before. "Believe me, I shall never contest with you such a slight gift as woman's love, Geoffrey. It is not worth fighting for. And _apropos_ of women, that reminds me,--I have promised to take you to the Earl of Elton's box at the Haymarket to-night,--he is a poor peer, very gouty and somewhat heavily flavoured with port-wine, but his daughter, Lady Sibyl, is one of the belles of England. She was presented last season and created quite a _furore_. Will you come?" "I am quite at your disposition"--I said, glad of any excuse to escape the dullness of my own company and to be in that of Lucio, whose talk, even if its satire galled me occasionally, always fascinated my mind and remained in my memory--"What time shall we meet?" "Go and dress now, and join me at dinner,"--he answered; "And we'll drive together to the theatre afterwards. The play is on the usual theme which has lately become popular with stage-managers,--the glorification of a 'fallen' lady, and the exhibition of her as an example of something superlatively pure and good, to the astonished eyes of the innocent. As a play it is not worth seeing,--but perhaps Lady Sibyl is." He smiled again as he stood facing me,--the light flames of the fire had died down to a dull uniform coppery red,--we were almost in darkness, and I pressed the small button near the mantelpiece that flooded the room with electric light. His extraordinary beauty then struck me afresh as something altogether singular and half unearthly. "Don't you find that people look at you very often as you pass, Lucio?" I asked him suddenly and impulsively.