Every man who has lived a life worthy the name of living has his own private dream of fair women, the memory of whom is as a provision laid up against the lean years that must come at last, however long they may be postponed by some special grace of the gods, which is, it is good to remember, granted to some—­the years when one has reluctantly to accept that the lovely game is almost, if not quite at an end, and to watch the bloom and abundance of fragrant young creatures pass us, unregarding, by.  And, indeed, it may happen that a man who has won what is for him the fairest of all fair faces, and has it still by his side, may enter sometimes, without disloyalty, that secret gallery of those other fair faces that were his before hers, in whom they are all summed up and surpassed, had dawned upon his life.  We shall hardly be loyal to the present if we are coldly disloyal to the past.  In the lover’s calendar, while there is but one Madonna, there must still be minor saints, to whom it is meet, at certain times and seasons, to offer retrospective candles—­saints that, after the manner of many saints, were once such charming sinners for our sakes, that utter forgetfulness of them were an impious boorishness surely unacceptable to the most jealous of Madonnas.  Public worship of them is not, of course, desirable, but occasional private celebrations are surely more than permissible—­such celebrations as that “night of memory and tears” which Landor consecrated to Rose Aylmer, or that song which Thackeray consecrated to certain loves of the long ago—­

Gillian’s dead, God rest her bier,
How I loved her twenty years syne! 
Marian’s married, but I sit here,
Alone and merry at forty year,
Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine.

So I, seated in my haunted restaurant, brought the burnt offerings of several cigars, and poured out various libations to my own private Gillians and Marians, and in fancy sat and looked into Angelica’s eyes at this table, and caressed Myrtle’s opaled hand at that, and read Sylvia a poem I had just written for her at still another.  “Whose names are five sweet symphonies,” wrote Rossetti.  Yes, symphonies, indeed, in the ears of memory are the names of the lightest loves that flittered butterfly-like across our path in the golden summer of our lives, each name calling up its human counterpart, with her own endearing personality distinguishing her from all other girls, her way of smiling, her way of talking, her way of being serious, all the little originalities on which she prided herself, her so solemnly held differentia of tastes and manners—­all, in a word, that made you realize that you were dining with Corinna and not with Chloe.  What a service of contrast each—­all unwittingly, need one say—­did the other, just in the same fashion as contrasting colours accentuate the special quality one of the other.  To have dined last night with Amaryllis, with her Titian red hair and green eyes, her tropic languor and honey-drowsy ways,