"They will all be banished to some desert island," said Frank.
"And draw all men after them, as the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin' did the rats," said Mr. Rayne.
"What are you talking about?" said Mrs. Rayne, joining us at this point.
"The pity of it," said her husband, "that beauty is only skin deep."
"That is deep enough," said Mrs. Rayne.
"Yes, if age and sickness and trouble did not make one shed it so soon," said I ungratefully.
"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Rayne—"'tis bad enough when it comes. Do you remember that Greek woman in Lothair, whose father was so fearfully rich that she seemed to be all crusted with precious stones?"
"Perfectly."
"To dance and sing was all she lived for, and Lothair must needs bring in the skeleton, as you did, by reminding her of the dolorous time when she would neither dance nor sing. You think she is crushed, to be sure, only Disraeli's characters never are crushed, any more than himself. 'Oh then,' she says, 'we will be part of the audience, and other people will dance and sing for us.' So beauty is always with us, though one person loses it."
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which made her pearls and velvet shimmer in the moonlight. She looked so white and cool and perfect, so apart from common clay, that all at once Queen Guinevere ceased to be my type of her, and I thought of "Lilith, first wife of Adam," as we see her in Rossetti's fanciful poem: