I was in love. At that time I was teaching myself German, and I sat
one day puzzling out two lines of Goethe:

"Oden and Thor, these two thou knowest; Freya, the heavenly, knowest
thou not."

And I remember how I cried aloud in sudden delight: _"I know her!"_
For a long time that was one of my pet names--"Freya dis
Himmlische!" I only heard of one other that I preferred--when in
course of time she told me about Frank Shirley, and how she had
loved him, and how their hopes had been wrecked. He had called her
"Lady Sunshine"; he had been wont to call it over and over in his
happiness, and as Sylvia repeated it to me--"Lady Sunshine! Lady
Sunshine!" I could imagine that I caught an echo of the very tones
of Frank Shirley's voice.

10. For several days I waited upon the postman, and when the summons
came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs
with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English
lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have
waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an
entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a
snow-white carpet, about which I had read in the newspapers that it
was woven in one piece, and had cost an incredible sum. One did not
have to profane it with his feet, as there was an elevator provided.

I was shown to Sylvia's morning-room, which had been "done" in pink
and white and gold by some decorator who had known her colours. It
was large enough to have held half-a-dozen of my own quarters, and