Let not the Grundy woman raise an eyebrow of deprecation at the informal
introduction of Jack and Mary, or we shall refute her with her own
precepts, which make the steps to a throne the steps of the social
pyramid. If she wishes a sponsor, we name an impeccable majesty of the
very oldest dynasty of all, which is entirely without scandal. We remind
her of the ancient rule that people who meet at court, vouched for by
royal favor, need no introduction.

These two had met under the roof of the Eternal Painter. His palette is
somewhere in the upper ether and his head in the interplanetary spaces.
His heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying
meteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on a
hot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desert
sky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creation
his fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till the
second that it is begun.

No earthly rival need be jealous of him. He will never clog the
galleries. He always paints on the same canvas, scraping off one picture
to make room for another. And you do not mind the loss of the old. You
live for the new.

His Majesty has no artistic memory. He is as young as he was the day
that he flung out his first tentative lunette after chaos. He is the
patron saint of all pilgrims from the city's struggle, where they found
no oases of rest. He melts "pasts" and family skeletons and hidden
stories of any kind whatsoever into the blue as a background with the
abandoned preoccupation of his own brushwork. His lieges, who seek