Alice: An Adultery

of old-time Athens than to the Imperial Peripatetics of the Daily Telegraph and Mr. Raven-Hill, her looks of fire turned my friend’s silky and insipid moustache into a veritable Burning Bush. But puppy endearments are of little interest to one who has just done his duty by No. 9 in distant Yoshi- wara ; so turned to the conversation of our dirty old Irish hostess, who, being drunk, grew more so, and exceedingly entertaining. Of the central forces which sway mankind, her knowledge was more comprehensive than conven- tional. For thirty years she had earned her bread in the capacity of a Japanese Mrs. Warren ; but having played with fire in many lands, the knowledge she had of her own subject, based on indefatigable personal research, was as accurate in detail as it was cosmopolitan in character. Yet she had not lost her ideals ; she was a devout Catholic, and her opinion of the human under- standing, despite her virginal innocence of Greek, was identical with that of Mr. Locke. On occasions I am as sensitive to inexplicable iii