Until the hour for dancing, prolonged melodies of themes modulated in the happiest moments of the great composers floated in the perfumed air from a company of unseen musicians, while the guests moved through the vast apartments, charmed or exalted by their splendor, or conversed in groups, every voice subdued and intelligent.

At midnight began the modish music of the dance, and groups of beautiful girls moved like the atoms of Chladni on the vibrating crystal, with their partners, to the sound of harps and violins, in pleasing figures or inebriating spirals.

When supper was served, the ivory fronts of a cabinet of gems divided itself in the centre,—­the two halves revolving upon silver hinges,—­and discovered a hall of great height and dimensions, walled with crimson damask, supporting pictures of all the masters of modern art.  The dome-like roof of this hall was of marble variously colored, and the floor tessellated and mosaicked in grotesque and graceful figures of Vesuvian lavas and painted porcelain.

The tables, couches, chairs, and vis-a-vis in this hall were of plain pattern and neutral dead colors, not to overpower or fade the pictures on the walls, or the gold and Parian service of the cedar tables.

But the chief beauty of this unequalled supper-room was an immense bronze candelabrum, which rose in the centre from a column of black marble.  It was the figure of an Italian elm, slender and of thin foliage, embraced, almost enveloped, in a vine, which reached out and supported itself in hanging from all the branches; the twigs bearing fruit, not of grapes, but of a hundred little spheres of crimson, violet, and golden light, whose combination produced a soft atmosphere of no certain color.

Neither Honoria, Dalton, nor myself remained long in the gallery.  We retired with a select few, and were served in an antechamber, separated from the grand reception-room by an arch, through which, by putting aside a silk curtain, Honoria could see, at a distance, any that entered, as they passed in from the hall.

My own position was such that I could look over her shoulder and see as she saw. Vis-a-vis with her, and consequently with myself, was Adonais, a celebrated author, and person of the beau monde.  On his left, Dalton, always mysteriously elegant and dangerously witty.  Denslow and Jeffrey Lethal, the critic, completed our circle.  The conversation was easy, animated, personal.

“You are fortunate in having a woman of taste to manage your entertainments,” said Lethal, in answer to a remark of Denslow’s,—­“but in bringing these people together she has made a sad blunder.”

“And what may that be?” inquired Dalton, mildly.

“Your guests are too well behaved, too fine, and on their guard; there are no butts, no palpable fools or vulgarians; and, worse, there are many distinguished, but no one great man,—­no social or intellectual sovereign of the occasion.”