No longer does the pater familias pray devoutly: "For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful"; he lives under a new rule, which says: "Don't worry about where your food is coming from-we'll have it waiting for you at

a. Wedding breakfast of my grandmother & grandfather 100 years ago

b. Mme. Maine de Biran's letter to her sister in law about costs of living

c. Tallyrand and his cook Carême

d. The King of Saxony sells a Dresden dinner set for a regiment of infantry

e. Prince de Soubise's cook needs 50 hams. f. Isaac asks Esau for venison

g. Mme. de Germini's soups not liked by the Venetians.

A

COUPLE of years ago I saw in the "agony column" of The Times a very curious advertisement. There are always curious things in that column-I have always been fascinated by that odd little company of forlorn people who so desperately and publicly wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. Some of them appear there over and over again -the person who signs himself, or herself, "C.," for example: who regularly every three months or so inserts the message "Tout passe, l'amitié reste." What singular and heartbreaking devotion does that brief legend convey? Does it ever reach the adored being for whom it is intended, I wonder? Does he ever see it, does he ever reply? Has he simply abandoned her? Were they sundered by some devastating tragedy which can never be healed? And will she go on till she dies, loosing these lovely flame-colored arrows into an utterly unresponsive void? ... I never tire of reflecting on these things; but the advertisement of which I have just spoken was of a different sort altogether. This was signed "Journalist," and merely said: "Your obituary? Well written, reviewed by yourself, and satisfaction thus insured." My first response to this oddity was mere amusement. How extraordinarily ingenious of this journalist! It seemed to me that he had

perhaps found a gold-mine-I could well imagine that he would be inundated with orders for glowing eulogies. And what an astonishing method of making a living— by arranging flowers, as it were, for the about-to-be-dead! That again was fascinating-for it made me wonder what sort of bird this journalist might be. Something wrong with him, no doubt-a kind of sadist, a gloomy creature who perhaps revelled rather unhealthily in the mortuary; even, perhaps, a necrophile. Or was he, on the other hand, perfectly indifferent and detached about it, a mere hack-writer who had, by elimination, arrived at a rather clever idea? . . . But from these speculations I went on to others, and among them the question-to me a highly interesting one of what, exactly, one would want put into one's own obituary. What would this be? Would one want just the usual sort of thing-the "he was born," "he lived in Rome," "he was a well-known connoisseur of the arts, and a patron of painting," "conspicuous in the diplomatic society of three countries," "a brilliant amateur archæologist,' "died intestate" sort of thing? . . . Or would one prefer to have one's personal qualities touched on-with perhaps a kindly reference to one's unfailing generosity, one's warmth of heart, and one's extraordinary equableness of disposition? . . .

By neither alternative did it seem to me that my "satisfaction could be insured." Neither for those who knew me, nor for those who did not, could any such

perfunctory eulogium be in the least evocative. In what respect would these be any better than the barest of tombstone engravings, with its "born" and "died" and "he was a devoted father"? Mrs. X. or Mr. Z., reading of me that I was an amateur archæologist and a kind old fellow, a retired diplomatic secretary, would form no picture of me, receive from such bare bones of statement not the faintest impression of what I might call the "essence" of my life: not the faintest. But if not these, what then? And it occurred to me suddenly that the best, and perhaps the only, way of leaving behind one a record of one's life which might be, for a world of strangers, revelatory, was that of relating some single episode of one's history: some single, and if possible central, episode in whose small prism all the colors and lights of one's soul might be seen. Seen just for a flash, and then gone. Apprehended, vividly, and then forgotten-if one ever does forget such things. And from this, I proceeded to a speculation as to just which one, of all the innumerable events of a well-filled life, I would choose as revelatory. My meeting with my wife at a ball in Calcutta, for example? Some incident of our unhappy life together-perhaps our quarrel in Venice, at the Lido? The effect of her suicide upon me, her drowning in the Mediterranean-the news of which came to me, while I was dining at the Reform Club, from the P. & O. Company? . . . I considered all of these, only to reject them. Possibly I rejected them-to some extent, anyway-simply because they were essentially painful. I don't know. Anyway, whatever the reasons, I did reject them, and at last found myself contemplating my odd little adventure with Reine Wilson, the novelist. Just why I fastened upon this, it would be hard to say. It was not an adventure at all: it was hardly even an episode. It was really nothing but the barest of encounters, as I see it now, or as any third person would see it. If I compare it with my protracted love-affair with Mrs. M., for example, or even with my very brief infatuation with Hilda K., it appears to be a mere nothing, a mere fragrance.

A mere fragrance! . . . Yes, it was that; and it is for that reason, I see now,

that it is so precious to me. Volatile and swift as it was, it somehow caught into itself all the scanty poetry of my life. If I may be pardoned for appearing a little bit "romantic" about myself, I might say that it was as if I were a tree, and had, in this one instance, put forth a single blossom, a blossom of unique beauty, perhaps a sort of "sport," which, unlike my other blossoms, bore no fruit, but excelled all the others in beauty and sweetness. That sounds, in the prosaic statement, rather affected, I am afraid; but it is as nearly a literal statement of the truth as I can find. It happened when I was a young man, about four years after I had married. I was already unhappy and restless. I wasn't wholly aware of this—I had, at all events, no conscious desire, as yet, to go in search of adventure. All the same, it is obvious to me now that I was, unconsciously, in search of some sort of escape or excitement. I went about a good deal—and I went about alone. My own tastes being mildly literary, and my wife's not, I made rather a specialty of literary teas and "squashes," and had soon made a considerable number of acquaintances among the younger writers who lived in London at that time. Among these was a group of young folk who ran a small monthly magazine called The Banner—a magazine which, like many other such things, ran a brilliant but sporadic course for a year or two and then went bankrupt. rupt. My friend Estlin first told me about this, and called my attention to the work of Reine Wilson, whose first novel was coming out serially in The Banner, and whose husband was assistanteditor of it. I read the first two chapters of "Scherzo," and I was simply transported by it. It seemed to me the most exquisite prose I had ever read-extraordinarily alive, extraordinarily poetic, and exquisitely feminine. It was the prose of a woman who was, as it were, all sensibility-of a soul that was all a tremulous awareness. Could one have-I asked Estlin-so ethereally delicate a consciousness, a consciousness so easily wounded, and live? And he horrified me by replying "No," and by telling me that Reine Wilson was to all intents-dying. She had a bad heart, and had been definitely "given up." She might die at any min

ute. And she ought, by rights, to be dead already.

This shocked me, and also made me very curious; and when Estlin asked me, one day, to come to lunch with himself and the Wilsons, I needed no urging. We were to meet them at a little French place in Wardour Street-long since gone, I regret to say-and on our way thither we stopped at a pub for a glass of sherry. It was there that, by way of preface to the encounter, Estlin told me that there was something "queer" in the Wilson situation.

"Queer?" I said.

'Yes, queer. Nobody can make it out. You see, they lived together before they married when they were both writing for The Times. For about three years. But then, all of a sudden, they married: and the minute they were properly married-presto!-they separated. She took a flat in Hampstead-and he took one in Bloomsbury. Once a week, they held a reception together at her flat-and they still do. But so far as any one knows, they've never lived together from that day to this. He doesn't seem to be in love with any one else and neither does she. They are perfectly friendly even affectionate. But they live apart. And she always refers to him simply as 'Wilson.' She even calls him Wilson. Damned funny."

I agreed with him, and I pondered. Was it-I asked-because she had a bad heart? too much of a strain for her? . . . Estlin thought not; though he wasn't sure. He even thought that the bad heart had developed after the separation. He shook his head over it, and said "Rum!" and we went to meet them. He added, inconsequentially, that he thought she would like me.

She did like me and I liked her. At first sight. I find it difficult to describe the impression she made upon me-I think I was first struck by the astonishing frailty of her appearance, an other world fragility, almost a transparent spiritual quality, as if she were already a disembodied soul. She was seated at a small table, behind a pot of ferns, which half concealed her face. Her brown eyes, under a straight bang of black hair, were round as a doll's, and as intense.

"Isn't it like meeting in a jungle?" she said. She made the tiniest of gestures toward the fern; and I was struck by the restraint with which she did this, and by the odd way in which her voice, though pitched very low, and very carefully controlled, nevertheless contrived to reveal a burning intensity of spirit such as I have never elsewhere encountered. There was something gingerly about her self-control: and also something profoundly terrifying. It seemed to me that I had never met any one whose hold on life was so terribly conscious. It was as if she held it-this small, burning jewel-quite literally in her hands; as if she felt that at any instant it might escape her; or as if she felt that, if it didn't escape, it might, if not firmly held, simply burn itself away in its own sheer aliveness. And to sit with her, to watch the intense restraint of all her gestures and expressions, and above all to listen to the feverish controlledness with which she spoke, was at once to share in this curious attitude toward life. Insensibly, one became an invalid. One felt that the flame of life was burning low-and burning low for every one-but burning with all the more beauty and pure excellence for that; and one entered into a strange and secret conspiracy to guard that precious flame with all one's power.

II

I HAD little opportunity, during that luncheon-party, for any "private" talk with Reine: the conversation was general. Not only that, but it was, as was to be expected, pretty literary, and I, perforce, took an inconspicuous part in it. Wilson struck me as a rather opinionated person, rather loud-voiced, rather sprawling, and I felt myself somewhat affronted by the excessiveness of his "Oxford manner.' In fact, I disliked him, and thought him rather a fool. How on earth-I wondered

had he managed to attract so exquisite a creature as his wife? What on earth had she seen in him? . . . For there was something coarse in him, and also, I felt sure, something dishonest. He seemed to me hypocritical. He seemed to me to be merely posing as a literary man. And I thought that his loud enthusiasms were

not that she had said, at lunch, anything especially remarkable: it was, rather, what she was, and how she said things. Her burning intensity of spirit, the sheer naked honesty with which she felt things, and the wonderful and terrible way in which she could appear so vividly and joyfully, and yet so precariously, alive all this, together with her charming small oddity of appearance, the doll-like seriousness of face and doll-like eyes, combined to make a picture which was not merely enchanting. It was, for me, terribly disturbing. I was going to fall in love with her-and I was going to fall hard and deep. Going to. I use the phrase advisedly. For there is always, in these affairs, a point at which one can say that one is going to fall in love, but has not yet done so: a point at which one feels the powerful and seductive fascination of this other personality, feels drawn to it almost irresistibly, and knows that unless one resists one is going to be enslaved. Nevertheless, it is, at this point, still possible to resist. One can turn one's back on the Siren, turn one's ship away from Circe's Isle, sail away-if one only has a little courage and good 'sense. Good sense? No. That phrase, I am afraid, has crept down to me from the Victorians. What I would prefer to call it now, in my own case, is cowardice. Or, if you like, caution. Or again, respect for the conventions. For I am sure that is what it was. . . . During the five days which intervened between the luncheon-party and my engagement for tea, I did a lot of thinking about this. I knew perfectly well that if I were to let myself go, I could fall in love. But did I want to fall in love? And suppose I did. Quite apart from my own domestic complications-and the situation with my wife was already quite sufficiently unpleasant-what good would it do me? For I was desperately, horribly, miserably sure of one thing and one thing only: that Reine Wilson would not fall in love with me. Or if she did, that she would fall out again in double-quick time. And there, hung up for the crows to peck at, I would be. .

I thought about this-and thought and thought. But I didn't as the hours crept toward Sunday-find any solution. Of course, I would go to tea-there was

no question about that. So much rope I would grant myself, and no more. No harm could come of that—or at any rate, no greater harm than was done already. One is ingenious, when one is falling in love, at finding good excuses for meetings with one's beloved. Yes, I would go to tea--and then I would make up my mind as to the future. A good deal would depend on what happened at tea. If I should disgrace myself-if she were to find me out-or, as was only too likely, if she simply found me uninteresting, a nice young fellow, no doubt, with an idea or two, but not at all on The Banner level

well, that would be the end of it. But if, on the other hand, our mutual attraction should deepen-if, somehow, by hook or by crook, I should manage to keep up the deception-or even, actually, to prove a sufficient match for her—what then?

What would happen to us?

. . . What about my wife? ... What about that detestable "Wilson"? .. And, above all, what about her bad heart? ...

III

THE new number of The Banner came out on Saturday, and it contained of course another instalment of "Scherzo." I read this and it seemed to me even more delightful and more obviously a work of first-rate genius, than the chapters which had gone before. It was in this instalment that the description of the picnic occurred. This entranced me. Never, it seemed to me, had an al fresco party been so beautifully done in prose. The gaiety, the coltish rompings of the young girls, that marvellously described wood, and the cries of the children in it, playing hide-and-seek-the solemn conversation of the two little boys who had discovered a dead vole, and were wondering how most magnificently to dispose of it-the arrival of Grandma Celia with the basket—and above all, Underhill's dream. It seemed to me a stroke of the finest genius to have poor Underhill, at that crisis of his life, dragged into such a party -frisked about, romped over, made to tell stories and to light fires; and then, when he sneaked away and found a clearing in the gorse and slept, having that marvellous dream-! The dream was so