followed were less easy to understand. Then came "Stark: A
Conte," about a midinette who, so far as I could gather,
murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather
like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either
skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue
between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I rather thought, in "snap."
Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata" [spelled in Greek]).
Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form,
and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care.
It was rather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I
wondered, any substance at all? It did not occur to me: suppose Enoch
Soames was a fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _I_
was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read
"L'Apres-midi d'un faune" without extracting a glimmer of
meaning; yet Mallarme, of course, was a master. How was I to
know that Soames wasn't another? There was a sort of music in his
prose, not indeed, arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden,
perhaps, with meanings as deep as Mallarme's own. I awaited his
poems with an open mind.

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had
had a second meeting with him. This was on an evening in January.
Going into the aforesaid domino-room, I had passed a table at which sat
a pale man with an open book before him. He had looked from his book
to me, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I
ought to have recognized him. I returned to pay my respects. After
exchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see I
am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but, "I prefer,' Soames
replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed his gesture
that I should sit down.