on the emperor's yacht at the naval manœuvres, we paid another visit to
our monkey house. The poor, misguided brute had died of starvation. It
had become so vain, so egotistical, so superior, that it refused food
and wasted away in a corner, gazing at itself, a hairy Narcissus, or
rather the perfect type of your modern Superman, who contemplates his
ego until his brain sickens and he dies quite mad."

Every one laughed. Mrs. Sheldam wondered what a Superman was, and
Ermentrude felt annoyed. Zarathustra was another of her gods, and this
brusquely related anecdote did not seem to her very spirituelle. But
she had not formulated an answer when she heard a name announced, a name
that set her heart beating. At last! The poet had kept his word. She was
to meet in the flesh the man whose too few books were her bibles of art,
of philosophy, of all that stood for aspiration toward a lovely ideal in
a dull, matter-of-fact world.

"Now," said the princess, as if smiling at some hidden joke, "now you
will meet _my_ Superman." And she led the young American girl to Octave
Kéroulan and his wife, and, after greeting them in her masculine manner,
she burst forth:--

"Dear poet! here is one of your adorers from overseas. Guard your
husband well, Madame Lys."

So he was married. Well, that was not such a shocking fact. Nor was
Madame Kéroulan either--a very tall, slim, English-looking blonde, who
dressed modishly and evidently knew that she was the wife of a famous
man. Ermentrude found her insipid; she had studied her face first before
comparing the mental photograph of the poet with the original. Nor did
she feel, with unconscious sex rivalry, any sense of inferiority to the