or soul, as the individual happens to incline.  To Sybarites the race is too short to be fatiguing, and the goal is only an ambuscade for satiety and ennui; to ascetics, the race course stretches to the borders of futurity, but even for them one form of pleasure, spiritual pleasure, lights up eternity.  The thing we want, we want; not because of its orthodoxy, or its excellency or beauty per se; we want it because it gratifies some idiosyncratic craving of our threefold natures.  The good things of this world are very adroitly and ingeniously labelled, but we rummage in the bonbonniere for a certain marron glace, and if it be not there, all the caramels in Venice, all the ‘gluko’ in Greece, all the rahatlicum in Turkey will not appease us.”

With her arms thrown back, and clasped around the satin cushion crushed against her head and shoulders, Miss Cutting lay on a red plush divan in her father’s picture gallery at home; and the swathing folds of a topaz-hued surah gown embroidered with scarlet poppies half concealed the feet that beat a tattoo on the polished oak floor.

“Then you have missed your marron glace?” answered Leo, turning from the contemplation of a new picture which Mr. Cutting had recently added to his collection.

“Of course.  Do not all of us sooner or later?  Where is yours?  Safe under lock and key, or hanging on some crag, ripening for the confectioner; or filched by some stealthy white hand, devoured by some eager lips that smile derisively at you while they nibble?”

From beneath drooping lids, Alma’s oblique glance noted the result of her Scipio Africanus’ tactics.

“Alma, too intemperate and prolonged diet of sweets has ruined your digestion; has rendered you an ethical dyspeptic.  A surfeit of sugar betrays itself in fermentation, and you have reached the stage of moral acidulation.”

“Ah, don’t drift into homiletics!  I see your marron grows hard by the vineyard where sour grapes flourish.  Leo, I am not so serenely proud as you, but a trifle more honest, and I have cried for my bonbon, never flouting its delicious flavor; hence, when I am ordered back to boiled milk and oatmeal, I make no feint to disguise my wry faces.”

Alma’s low, teasing laugh stung like some persistent buzzing insect, and a slight flush tinged her companion’s cheek as she replied: 

“Why plunge to the opposite extreme?  You will starve on that porridge you are desperately preparing for yourself.”

“What else remains?  This world is a huge bazaar, a big church fair, and like other eager-eyed children I promptly set my heart on the great ‘bisc’ doll with its head turning coquettishly from side to side, singing snatches from ‘La Grande Duchcsse’, and clad like Sheba’s queen!  I stake all my pennies on a chance in the raffle, which has a ‘consolation prize’ hidden away from vulgar gaze.  By and by the dice rattle, and over my head, quite out of my reach, is borne the coveted