more able to count the pearls that fell from the Sphinx's eyes.

It took quite half a bottle of champagne to pull us up to our usual
spirits, as we sat at supper at a window where we could see London
spread out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, dotted with fiery
embroideries, sudden flaring stamens, and rows of ant-like fireflies
moving in slow zig-zag processions along and across its petals.

'How strange it seems,' said the Sphinx, 'to think that for every two of
those moving double-lights, which we know to be the eyes of hansoms, but
which seem up here nothing but gold dots in a very barbaric pattern of
black and gold, there are two human beings, no doubt at this time of
night two lovers, throbbing with the joy of life, and dreaming, heaven
knows what dreams!'

'Yes,' I rejoined;' and to them I'm afraid we are even more impersonal.
From their little Piccadilly coracles our watch-tower in the skies is
merely a radiant facade of glowing windows, and no one of all who glide
by realises that the spirited illumination is every bit due to your
eyes. You have but to close them, and every one will be asking what has
gone wrong with the electric light.'

A little nonsense is a great healer of the heart, and by means of such
nonsense as this we grew merry again. And anon we grew sentimental and
poetic, but--thank heaven! we were no longer tragic.

Presently I had news for the Sphinx. 'The rose-tree that grows in the
garden of my mind,' I said, 'desires to blossom.'

'May it blossom indeed,' she replied; 'for it has been flowerless all