The Sunday dinner at Mrs Barclay's was early, and when George Osborne found himself for the first time in his life with the Thames beneath his feet, it was a little after three o'clock. 'What an amazing thing it is to be in London for the first time, and with the knowledge of eight-and-twenty years! Those who are born in London never fathom its depths, its influence, its strength, its significance, its import. 'Those who come to London young are cowed at first by its proportions, become familiar with half one district, and treat all other districts into which accident may drag them as pagan regions beyond the pale of the true civilisation. 'But I confront London for the first time in the mature years of youth, with book knowledge of all its wonders, and a feeling of brotherhood for it. Greater England is my father, but this London is my most beloved sister, of whom I am proud. 'The universe, hung by God in the viewless vault of space, and man are the most wonderful of His disclosed works, and I bow down in worship before the creator of these miracles. This London, the noblest monument of man, was reared by the hands of my brothers of Greater Britain. I am their fellow, their equal. We it was who did it. 'Under Him whom I adore, nothing fills me with such emotions of worship as the spirit of this great concrete empire, of which London is the sign-manual on earth. 'In the still meadowlands around Stratford, I have led a quiet if not a blameless life. Now and then I have been here and there--Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leamington, Warwick, Oxford, Lichfield, Burton, Leicester; but all put together do not equal London. If I have kept away from this town until now, it was from no want of opportunities to visit it. I might have come any month. But I did not wish to come until I could stay. I deliberately did not avail myself of the opportunities I enjoyed. I studied the place afar off. I might have often come to London, but I did not. I kept aloof. I wished not to see it with my bodily eyes until I had qualified to appreciate it; just as I deferred reading Shakespeare until I thought I should be able to understand him. 'I know all the things around me. This is Blackfriars Bridge, that is Waterloo Bridge, that is the Temple, that is Somerset House, that is St Paul's. I have reverenced their spirits from afar. To-day their spirits have taken shape, and I am among the saintly shrines of my imagination. I have reverenced beauty from afar. To-day I have drunk a potion and am mad. 'Am I in love? Not I. I have a splendid madness upon me. I do not want her. I do not want her love. I want only the image as I see it. He may marry her if he will. I shall never try. I have her image, and neither tyrant nor thief can take that away from me. I make her high-priestess in the temple of my dreams. She is too sacred for me to touch. As I see her now, her image is immortal, immutable. In a few years she will change. I place my goddess with the unalterable deities of the ideal. She shall never be other to me than she is. I shall marry some day, I suppose; but I shall never marry her. The emotions which lead men to marriage have no connection with what I now feel. While I am under the spell of her presence I shall enjoy this madness. When she is gone I shall live in the light of a memory. 'I shall stay in London. I shall take chambers and live alone, that is, unless I marry. I shall lead my old life, read by night, and wander about by day. This money, into which I have just come, will yield me fifteen hundred a year; and, married or single, I shall be able to live comfortably on that. I shall live in London and cherish my image, and when I die I hope I may be found no worse than my fellow-man, and may fall within the mercy of God and the pity of my Saviour; for I must not let the little money, or London, or this wonder at the hotel turn my head and darken up my heart against the great matter of life. What fools men are to throw away the great object of all this life, either with carelessness or deliberation! No, no. I shall, I hope, retain my taste for books, and the simple faith in which I was brought up--and her image for ever.' He turned away from the parapet and crossed to the Surrey side. 'There is no great hurry,' he mused, 'for my leaving Barclay's. I can stay there a few weeks, until I get more accustomed to the crush and uproar of all London. 'Can it be Sunday? Can this be the day of rest in the capital of the British Empire? I can scarcely believe it. Here are shops open, cabs and tramcars trading just as on any other day. While I stood on the bridge I saw the steamboats crowded with people. Sunday! why, it is more like a fair! You only want the booths and the jugglers to make it a mop. I wonder these things are not stopped. All this traffic is surely against the law. It is bad in itself, and worse as an example. It ought to be stopped. It could be stopped by law, and it ought to be stopped. Why is it not stopped? 'This is Blackfriars Road. It leads into St George's Circus. I know from maps, but how different these places are from what I fancied. 'Gordon. Yes, the name is Scotch, and Marie is French. I wonder what religion she is. She has a maid, an Irish maid. The Irish are Roman Catholics, the maid is sure to be a Roman Catholic. The chances are the mistress is too, for her mother was a French Canadian. Or stop, are the French Canadians Huguenots or not? That I don't know. 'When she ceases to speak I always hear music; and when the music stops the air seems to listen for more. I wonder does such a beauty know how she fills the veins with wonder and joy? No, no. She could not know and carry her head in that way. She would have more consideration for those whose fate it is to see her a little while and lose her for ever. Because, of course, when she leaves London, I shall never see her again. Of course not. 'It is getting dusk; I had better go back, or I shall grow confused presently. It is cold. What an idiot I was to come without an overcoat! Why did I come at all? Why did I leave that warm room and that wonderful presence? Because the presence was too much for me. 'It is chilly. 'Here is the Thames again. I did not notice it much when I went over it awhile ago. Down there it flows from Westminster Bridge to meet all the other waters of the world. This is a main road to the ocean. I have seen only lanes and byways of water before, and never the sea. This is an imperial highway to the sea--the most important piece of water in the world, except the Jordan. The Amazon, the Mississippi, ay, all the watery plains of the Pacific, are nothing to man compared with this highway, from which set out the fleets of Britain. This river is the type of commerce, the symbol of enterprise; its shores are the gateway through which pass the riches and the sea-power of the greatest nation.' He left the bridge. 'I wonder is that girl still sitting where I left her? Is she sitting on that couch still, or has she left the room? How commonplace the room would be without her! All the things would look cold and cheerless. I have been in that room only once, and yet I know it would look mean and paltry without her. But when she is there everything gathers splendour from her, commonplace things are lifted up and made partakers of her glory. 'I in love with her! No more than the Straits of Dover are with Homer.' The cold began to pinch him a little, and letting go his musings, he walked rapidly back to the hotel. Without thinking of where he went, he walked into the drawing-room. By this time it was almost dark, but the gas had not yet been lighted. At first Osborne thought he was alone, but before he had reached the middle of the room that voice came to him, saying,-- 'Oh, Mr Osborne, I am so glad you have come back to flirt with me. I have been doing my best to fall in love with Mr Nevill, but I couldn't. So I sent him away.' He could not have mistaken that voice. He could not mistake her voice, but he must have mistaken the words. What, his divinity speak thus! Monstrous! 'Shall I light the gas for you, Miss Gordon?' he asked, in a cold, formal tone. 'Yes, turn up the gas for us. You can bear the gaslight, he can't. Thank you. Now come over here and sit down and amuse me. Don't get a hassock at my feet, and say you want to worship me. It is all very well to worship solemn people, but I am not a bit solemn, and I want to be amused. Mr Nevill wanted to worship me and I sent him away.' 'I am afraid you will find me less amusing than Mr Nevill.' Why, it wasn't the feet of the idol alone, but the whole of the idol was clay! What clay! What glorious clay! Was ever so frivolous a spirit in so splendid a mould? 'Nonsense! Come and sit down here. Not on a hassock, but on a good stout oak chair. That one will answer. Come nearer--nearer still. That will do.' She was more flippant than Nevill. Why had he come back? Why had he not gone on and found some other place to stay at and there preserve his ideal? It was cruel, too cruel. Now he could never conjure up the image of her who sat before him, without hearing, not the music he had listened to that day at dinner, but these disenchanting, discordant, flippant words. What a magnificent creature she was! 'Well,' she said, fixing those dark eyes on him, 'where have you been since?' 'I have been out taking my first daylight look at London.' 'And how do you like it?' 'I think London is the most wonderful place in the world.' 'The most wonderful place in the world for dulness?' 'No; for everything that is great and noble and significant.' 'Whe-ew!' A whistle! A lady whistling! A lady whistling at the idea of London being great and august! Well, he might expect anything now. No doubt she smoked. 'Now, look here, Mr Osborne.' He wondered she didn't call him simple 'Osborne.' 'Now look here, Mr Osborne, take this London Sunday and this very day as a specimen of dulness. What could be more satisfactory? I don't know what you did before dinner. I go in to dinner, I sit down. A man opposite me makes a remark; everyone stares. I say something, another man says something, Mr Nevill says something more. You try to say something, and choke and say nothing. Then four ladies give us scraps of sermons we had grown tired of as children. We come into the drawing-room, we go to sleep, and are waked up by you and Mr Nevill coming back. You walk over, stare at me in a most frightful manner, and rush away. Mr Nevill tries to make love to me, and fails. The other ladies go away to lie down or get ready for church, and I am left here alone until you turn up. When you do look in, you are as cheerful as a mute at a funeral. Now, tell me, Mr Osborne, is not that stupid?' Osborne felt rather disappointed she did not wind up with 'Damn it all, Georgie, old man, but this is infernally slow; let's go liquor-up and have a weed.' Nothing she could say or do now would surprise him. She was no longer an enigma or a mystery, but an ascertained certainty, a denounced deception. He said, simply and sadly,-- 'You know, Miss Gordon, we Anglo-Saxons are a stupid race.' 'But there are exceptions.' 'You will not find many in the pure Anglo-Saxon blood.' Bowing slightly. 'Things are much altered when, through the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon veins, flows brighter and livelier blood.' 'You are not stupid,' she said. 'I approve of the dull ways you have been finding fault with.' 'Ah, that is acquired stupidity, not natural. I did not say you are intelligent, but you are intellectual, intensely intellectual, and poetic. You always look at the glorified side of things. You are a poet.' He stared at her. He forgot everything, and stared at her. When he recovered himself he replied nervously, hesitatingly, diffidently,-- 'I-I assure you, Miss Gordon, I never wrote a line of poetry in my life--never even thought of such a thing.' 'It isn't necessary a poet should write poetry. He may think it.' 'But I assure you I have never even thought a line of poetry in my life.' 'Yes, you have. You thought poetry to-day at dinner, and were too shy to speak it.' Again he forgot everything, and stared. A criminal caught red-handed could not have been more amazed with fear. He had never been accused of poetry before, and her words were like heartless revellers who broke into the sanctuary of his soul, tore from it his most sacred secret, and set it up in the marketplace to be jeered at by all the town. She laughed softly. 'There is no witchery in it. I told you you were not intelligent, but you were intellectual. I am not intellectual, but I am intelligent. You are intellectual and a poet. I am intelligent, and I found you out.'