But providence6 had not exhausted7 its miracles, and Lillie was not to spend a miserable8 afternoon. The miracle was speeding along towards her on the top of an omnibus—a miracle of beauty and smartness. On reaching the vicinity of the Old Maid's Club, the miracle, which was of course of the female gender9, tapped the driver amicably10 upon the hat with her parasol and said "Stop please." The petite creature was the spirit of self-help itself and scorned the aid of the gentleman in front of her, preferring to knock off his hat and crush the driver's so long as the independence of womanhood was maintained. But she maintained it charmingly and without malice11 and gave the conductor a sweet smile in addition to his fare as she tripped away to the Old Maids' Club.
Amicably said, "Stop please."
Lillie was fascinated the instant Turple the magnificent announced "Miss Wilkins" in suave12 tones. The mere13 advent14 of a candidate raised her spirits and she found herself chatting freely with her visitor even before she had put her through the catechism. But the catechism came at last.
"Why do I want to join you?" asked the miracle. "Because I am disgusted with my lover—because I am a femme incomprise. Oh, don't stare at me as if I were a medley15 of megrims and fashionable ailments16, I'm the very opposite of that. Mine is a buoyant, breezy, healthy nature, straightforward17 and simple. That's why I complain of being misunderstood. My lover is a poet—and the misunderstanding I have to endure at his hands is something appalling19. Every man is a bit of a poet where woman is concerned, and so every woman is more or less misunderstood, but when you are unfortunate enough to excite the affection of a real whole poet—well, that way madness lies. Your words are twisted into meanings you never intended, your motives20 are misconstrued, and your simplest actions are distorted. Silverplume, for it is the well-known author of 'Poems of Compassion21' that I have had the misfortune to captivate, never calls without laying a sonnet22 next day; in which remarks, that must be most misleading to those who do not know me, occur with painful frequency. His allowance is two kisses per day—one of salutation, one of farewell. We have only been actually engaged two months, yet I have counted up two hundred and thirty-nine distinct and separate kisses in the voluminous 'Sonnet Series' which he has devoted23 to our engagement, and, what is worse, he describes himself as depositing them.
"'Where at thy flower-mouth exiguous24
The purple passion mantles25 to the brim.'
It sounds as if I was berouged like a dowager. Purple passion, indeed! I let him kiss me because he appears to like it and because there seems something wrong about it—but as for really caring a pin one way or another, well, you Miss Dulcimer, know how much there is in that! This 'Sonnet Series' promises to be endless, the course of our acquaintanceship is depicted26 in its most minute phases with the most elaborate inaccuracy—if I smile, if I say: 'How do you do?' if I put my hand to my forehead, if I look into the fire, down go fourteen lines giving a whole world of significance to my meanest actions, and making Himalayas out of the most microscopic28 molehills. I am credited with thoughts I never dreamed of and sentiments I never felt, till I ask myself whether any other woman was ever so cruelly misunderstood as I? I grow afraid to do or say anything, lest I bring upon my head a new sonnet. But even so I cannot help looking something or the other; and when I come to read the sonnet I find it is always the other. Once I refused to see him for a whole week, but that only resulted in seven 'Sonnets29 of Absence,' imaginatively depicting30 what I was saying and doing each day, and containing a detailed31 analysis of his own sensations, as well as reminiscences of past happy hours together. Most of them I had no recollection of, and the only one I could at all share was that of a morning we spent on the Ramsgate cliffs where Silverplume put his handkerchief over his face and fell asleep. In the last line of the sonnet it came out:
"'There mid32 the poppies of the planisphere,
I swooned for very joy and wearihead.'
But I knew it by the poppies. Then, dear Miss Dulcimer, you should just see the things he calls me—'Love's gonfalon and lodestar' and what-not. Very often I can't even find them in the dictionary and it makes me uneasy. Heaven knows what he may be saying about me! When he talks of
"'The rack of unevasive lunar things'
I do not so much complain, because it's their concern if they are libelled. It is different with incomprehensible remarks flung unmistakably at my own head such as
"'O chariest of Caryatides.'
It sounds like a reproach and I should like to know what I have done to deserve it. And then his general remarks are so monotonously33 unintelligible34. One of his longest poetical35 epistles, which is burnt into my memory because I had to pay twopence for extra postage, began with this lament36:
"'O sweet are roses in the summer time
And Indian naiads' weary walruses37
And yet two-morrow never comes to-day.'
I cannot see any way out of it all except by breaking off our engagement. When we were first engaged, I don't deny I rather liked being written about in lovely-sounding lines but it is a sweet one is soon surfeited38 with, and Silverplume has raved39 about me to that extent that he has made me look ridiculous in the eyes of all my friends. If he had been moderate, they would have been envious40; now they laugh when they read of my wonderful charms, of my lithe41 snake's mouth, and my face which shames the sun and my Epipsychidiontic eyes (whatever that may be) and my
"'Wee waist that holds the
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