"Exactly. You think you are making an epigram, Mr. Sims. You are uttering the simple truth. There are no harsh discords here. You are led up from one dish to another; you may eat straight through this dinner. You will find that all the surprises resolve themselves, like the surprises in harmony."
"Great Scot!" cried Mr. Sims. "I had no idea eating was allied to music, as well as to painting! It only remains to drag in poetry."
"Oh!" interposed Grace, "she requires no dragging. Does not she step in of her own accord? From Homer downwards all the grand, healthy old poets take delight in the pleasures of the table. It is only the morbid, attenuated school that feed on rose-leaves."
"That reminds me of the 'Souls,' that exclusive society of æsthetes in London we have heard so much about," said Mrs. Van Winkle. "Are you a 'Soul,' Miss Ballinger?"
Grace laughed. "I am nobody, but I am not a 'Soul'."
"I should like to be one," sighed her hostess. "But must I abandon all the pleasures of the flesh to be admitted to this spiritual community?"
"No; some female 'Souls' are very corporeally active—a sort of 'Walkyre'—spirits on horseback. They ride; they hunt."
"In couples?" asked the hostess, with an air of infantine innocence.
"Only misanthropes like doing things alone," returned Grace, with a smile. "I am sure I don't."
"Nor I!" cried Mrs. Siebel.