explosion. I must not dare, I must not presume, to entertain the
smallest hope. I must endeavour sternly to think of something
else.

Needless to say, I thought, I dreamed of nothing else, day or
night. Waking, I walked arm-in-arm with a clown, and cracked a
portentous whip to the brave music of a band. Sleeping, I
pursued--perched astride of a coal-black horse--a princess all
gauze and spangles, who always managed to keep just one
unattainable length ahead. In the early morning Harold and I,
once fully awake, cross-examined each other as to the
possibilities of this or that circus tradition, and exhausted the
lore long ere the first housemaid was stirring. In this
state of exaltation we slipped onward to what promised to be a
day of all white days--which brings me right back to my text,
that grown-up people really ought to be more careful.

I had known it could never really be; I had said so to myself a
dozen times. The vision was too sweetly ethereal for embodiment.

Yet the pang of the disillusionment was none the less keen and
sickening, and the pain was as that of a corporeal wound. It
seemed strange and foreboding, when we entered the breakfast-
room, not to find everybody cracking whips, jumping over chairs,
and whooping. In ecstatic rehearsal of the wild reality to come.

The situation became grim and pallid indeed, when I caught the
expressions "garden-party" and "my mauve tulle," and realized
that they both referred to that very afternoon. And every
minute, as I sat silent and listened, my heart sank lower and