No--but what is surprising, is the way that, as I feel, I alone always escape detection, always throw dust in other people's eyes.

THE LISTENER

The topic was one of my favourite topics of conversation, but I didn't at all feel on this occasion that it was I who was speaking. No, it was the Truth shining through me; the light of the Revelation which I had been chosen to proclaim and blazon to the world. No wonder they were all impressed by my moving tones and gestures; no wonder even the fastidious lady whom it was most difficult to please kept watching me with almost ecstatic attention.

As a cloud may obscure the sun in his glory, so from some mora.s.s of memory arose a tiny mist of words to darken my mind for a moment. I brushed them aside; they had no meaning. Sunning myself in the mirror of those eyes, never, for a moment, could I credit that devil-suggested explanation of their gaze.

Oh, no! that phrase I had heard, I had heard, was a nonsense phrase; the words, 'She mimics you to perfection,' were nothing but a bit of unintelligible jabber.

ABOVE THE CLOUDS

'I do so hate gossip,' she murmured.

'How I hate it too!' I heard myself exclaim.

'There is so much that is good and n.o.ble in human nature; why not talk of that?'

'Why not indeed?' I sighed.

'I always feel that it is one's own fault if one dislikes people, or finds them boring.'

'How I agree with you!' I cried sincerely.

'But people are nowadays so cynical--they sneer at everything that makes life worth living--Love, Faith, Friendship--'

'And yet those very names are so lovely that even when used in mockery they shed a radiance--they shine like stars.'

'How beautifully you put it! I have so enjoyed our talk.' I had enjoyed it too, and felt all the better for it, only a little giddy and out of breath, as if I had been up in a balloon.

THE BUBBLE

Walking home at night, troubled by the world's affairs, and with the National Debt crushing down my weak shoulders, I sometimes allow my Thoughts an interlude of solace. From the jar in which I keep my vanity bottled, I remove the cork; out rushes that friendly Jinn and swells up and fills the sky. I walk on lightly through another world, a world in which I cut a very different figure.

I shall not describe that exquisite, evanescent universe; even for me 'tis but the bubble of a moment; I soon snuff it out, or of itself it melts in the thin air.

CAUTION

With all that I know about life, all this cynical and sad knowledge of what happens and must happen, all the experience and caution and disillusion stored and packed in the uncanny, cold, grey matter of my cerebrum--with all this inside my head, how can I ever dream of banging it against the Stars?

DESIRES

These exquisite and absurd fancies of mine--little curiosities, and greedinesses, and impulses to kiss and touch and s.n.a.t.c.h, and all the vanities and artless desires that nest and sing in my heart like birds in a bush--all these, we are now told, are an inheritance from our pre-human past, and were hatched long ago in very ancient swamps and forests. But what of that? I like to share in the dumb delights of birds and animals, to feel my life drawing its sap from roots deep in the soil of Nature. I am proud of those bright-eyed, furry, four-footed progenitors, and not at all ashamed of my cousins, the Tigers and Apes and Peac.o.c.ks.

MOMENTS

'Awful moments? Why, yes, of course,' I said, 'life is full of them--let me think--'

'To find other people's unposted letters in an old pocket; to be seen looking at oneself in a street-mirror, or overhead talking of the Ideal to a d.u.c.h.ess; to refuse Nuns who come to the door to ask for subscriptions, or to be lent by a beautiful new acquaintance a book she has written full of mystical slipslop, or dreadful musings in an old-world garden--'

THE EPITAPH

'But perhaps he is a friend of yours?' said my lips. 'Is it safe?' my eyes asked, 'Dare I tell you what I think of him?'

It was safe; only silence fell upon them, those Sad Ones, who at my decease should murmur, 'He never said of any one an unkind word.' 'Alas, Farewell!' breathed that boyish daydream of my funeral, as it faded.

INTERRUPTION

'Life,' said a gaunt widow, with a reputation for being clever--'life is a perpetual toothache.'

In this vein the conversation went on: the familiar topics were discussed of labour troubles, epidemics, cancer, tuberculosis, and taxation.

Near me there sat a little old lady who was placidly drinking her tea, and taking no part in the melancholy chorus. 'Well, I must say,' she remarked, turning to me and speaking in an undertone, 'I must say I enjoy life.'

'So do I,' I whispered.

'When I enjoy things,' she went on, 'I know it. Eating, for instance, the sunshine, my hot-water bottle at night. Other people are always thinking of unpleasant things. It makes a difference,' she added, as she got up to go with the others.