to see something some day of that wonderful non-existent fantastic
world which we still hope for and dream about and call Bohemia. She
longed to move in literary and artistic circles. She had fashioned
to herself, like many other romantic girls, a rose-coloured picture
of Bohemian existence; not knowing indeed that Bohemia is now, alas!
an extinct province, since Belgravia and Kensington swallowed it
bodily down, digested, and assimilated it. So this casual talk
with the handsome young artist in the second-class carriage, on
the Great Southern line, was to Elma as a charming and delightful
glimpse of an enchanted region she could never enter. It was Paradise
to the Peri. She turned the conversation at once, therefore, with
resolute intent upon art and artists, determined to make the most
while it lasted of this unique opportunity. And since the subject
of self, with an attentive listener, is always an attractive
one, even to modest young men like Cyril Waring--especially when
it's a pretty girl who encourages you to dilate upon it--why, the
consequence was, that before many minutes were over, the handsome
young man was discoursing from his full heart to a sympathetic soul
about his chosen art, its hopes and its ideals, accompanied, by a
running fire of thumb-nail illustrations. He had even got so far in
the course of their intimacy as to take out the portfolio, which
lay hidden under the seat--out of deference to his disguise as
a stock-broker, no doubt--and to display before Elma's delighted
eyes, with many explanatory comments as to light and shade, or
perspective and foreshortening, the studies for the picture he had
just then engaged upon.

By-and-by, as his enthusiasm warmed under Elma's encouragement,
the young artist produced Sardanapalus himself once more from his
box, and with deftly persuasive fingers coiled him gracefully round