Gillians and Marians, and in fancy sat and looked into Angelica's eyes
at this table, and caressed Myrtle's opaled hand at that, and read
Sylvia a poem I had just written for her at still another. "Whose names
are five sweet symphonies," wrote Rossetti. Yes, symphonies, indeed, in
the ears of memory are the names of the lightest loves that flittered
butterfly-like across our path in the golden summer of our lives,
each name calling up its human counterpart, with her own endearing
personality distinguishing her from all other girls, her way of
smiling, her way of talking, her way of being serious, all the little
originalities on which she prided herself, her so solemnly held
differentia of tastes and manners--all, in a word, that made you realize
that you were dining with Corinna and not with Chloe. What a service of
contrast each--all unwittingly, need one say--did the other, just in the
same fashion as contrasting colours accentuate the special quality one
of the other. To have dined last night with Amaryllis, with her Titian
red hair and green eyes, her tropic languor and honey-drowsy ways,
was to feel all the keener zest in the presence of Callithoe on
the following evening, with her delicate soul-lit face, and eager
responsiveness of look and gesture--_blonde cendré_, and _fausse
maigre_--a being one of the hot noon, the other a creature of the
starlight. But I disclaim the sultanesque savour of thus writing of
these dear bearers of symphonic names. To talk of them as flowers and
fruit, as colour and perfume, as ivory and velvet, is to seem to forget
the best of them, and the best part of loving them and being loved
again; for that consisted in their comradeship, their enchanted
comradeship, the sense of shared adventure, the snatching of a fearful
joy together. For a little while we had escaped from the drab and
songless world, and, cost what it might, we were determined to take
possession, for a while at least, of that paradise which sprang into
existence at the moment when "male and female created He them." Such