this long evening; and bring me a rose fresh with all the dews of
inspiration--no florist's flower, wired and artificially scented, no
bloom of yesterday's hard-driven brains.'

'I was only thinking,' I said, '_à propos_ of nightingales and roses,
that though all the world has heard the song of the nightingale to the
rose, only the nightingale has heard the answer of the rose. You know
what I mean?'

'Know what you mean! Of course, that's always easy enough,' retorted the
Sphinx, who knows well how to be hard on me.

'I'm so glad,' I ventured to thrust back; 'for lucidity is the first
success of expression: to make others see clearly what we ourselves are
struggling to see, believe with all their hearts what we are just daring
to hope, is--well, the religion of a literary man!'

'Yes! it's a pretty idea,' said the Sphinx, once more pressing the rose
of my thought to her brain; 'and indeed it's more than pretty ...'

'Thank you!' I said humbly.

'Yes, it's _true_--and many a humble little rose will thank you for it.
For, your nightingale is a self-advertising bird. He never sings a song
without an eye on the critics, sitting up there in their stalls among
the stars. He never, or seldom, sings a song for pure love, just
because he must sing it or die. Indeed, he has a great fear of death,
unless--you will guarantee him immortality. But the rose, the trusting
little earth-born rose, that must stay all her life rooted in one spot
till some nightingale comes to choose her--some nightingale whose song