To you he is a living man; you always talk of him as if he had just gone out of the room, and yet you persist in believing in his innocence." "You misapprehend me," I said, "the passion of his life was for Mary Fitton, to give her a name; I mean the 'dark lady' of the sonnets, who was Beatrice, Cressida and Cleopatra, and you yourself admit that a man who has a mad passion for a woman is immune, I think the doctors call it, to other influences." "Oh, yes, Frank, of course; but how could Shakespeare with his beautiful nature love a woman to that mad excess ?" "Shakespeare hadn't your overwhelming love of plastic beauty," I replied; "he fell in love with a dominant personality, the complement of his own yielding, amiable disposition." "That's it," he broke in, "our opposites attract us irresistibly--the charm of the unknown!" "You often talk now," I went on, "as if you had never loved a woman; yet you must have loved--more than one." "My salad days, Frank," he quoted, smiling, "when I was green in judgment, cold of blood." "No, no," I persisted, "it is not a great while since you praised Lady So and So and the Terrys enthusiastically." "Lady -- --," he began gravely (and I could not but notice that the mere title seduced him to conventional, poetic language), "moves like a lily in water; I always think of her as a lily; just as I used to think of Lily Langtry as a tulip, with a figure like a Greek vase carved in ivory.

But I always adored the Terrys: Marion is a great actress with subtle charm and enigmatic fascination: she was my 'Woman of no importance,' artificial and enthralling; she belongs to my theatre--" As he seemed to have lost the thread, I questioned again.
"And Ellen ?" "Oh, Ellen's a perfect wonder," he broke out, "a great character.

Do you know her history ?" And then, without waiting for an answer, he continued: "She began as a model for Watts, the painter, when she was only some fifteen or sixteen years of age.

In a week she read him as easily as if he had been a printed book.

He treated her with condescending courtesy, _en grand seigneur_, and, naturally, she had her revenge on him.
"One day her mother came in and asked Watts what he was going to do about Ellen.