"And a poor excuse is better than none, isn't it, dear?" said Sylvia, her face full in the cataract of the moonlight.
As a conclusion for this chapter I will copy out a little song which I extemporised for Sylvia on our way home to Yellowsands—too artlessly happy, it will be observed, to rhyme correctly:—
Sylvia's dancing 'neath the moon,
Like a star in water;
Sylvia's dancing to a tune
Fairy folk have taught her.
Glow-worms light her little feet
In her fairy theatre;
Oh, but Sylvia is sweet!
Tell me who is sweeter!
CHAPTER XII
AT THE CAFE DE LA PAIX
As love-making in which we have no share is apt to be either tantalising or monotonous, I propose to skip the next fortnight and introduce myself to the reader at a moment when I am once more alone. It is about six o'clock on a summer afternoon, I am in Paris, and seated at one of the little marble tables of the Cafe de la Paix, dreamily watching the glittering tide of gay folk passing by,—
"All happy people on their way
To make a golden end of day."
Meditatively I smoke a cigarette and sip a pale greenish liquor smelling strongly of aniseed, which isn't half so interesting as a commonplace whiskey and soda, but which, I am told, has the recommendation of being ten times as wicked. I sip it with a delicious thrill of degeneration, as though I were Eve tasting the apple for the first time,—for "such a power hath white simplicity." Sin is for the innocent,—a truth which sinners will be the first to regret. It was so, I said to myself, Alfred de Musset used to sit and sip his absinthe before a fascinated world. It is a privilege for the world to look on greatness at any moment, even when it is drinking. So I sat, and privileged the world.