allegory of real life, in the manner in which, at certain epochs, our
Idealist was brought into contact with the fair actress of ideal
creations. There was, in short, something of a moral in the way these two
streams of existence--the one belonging to the Actual, the other to the
Imaginary--flowed on, crossing each other at stated times. Which was the
more really imaginative--the life of the stage, or that of the world's
stage? The gay Fanny was rejoiced to welcome back again her early lover.
She ran on, talking of a thousand topics, without remarking the absent
mind and musing eye of Godolphin, till he himself stopped her somewhat
abruptly:--

"Well, Fanny, well, and what do you know of Saville? You have grown
intimate with him, eh? We shall meet at his house this evening."

"Oh, yes, he is a charming person in his little way; and the only man who
allows me to be a friend without dreaming of becoming a lover. Now that's
what I like. We poor actresses have so much would-be love in the course
of our lives, that a little friendship now and then is a novelty which
other and soberer people can never appreciate. On reading Gil Blas the
other day--I am no great reader, as you may remember--I was struck by that
part in which the dear Santillane assures us that there was never any love
between him and Laura the actress. I thought it so true to nature, so
probable, that they should have formed so strong an intimacy for each
other, lived in the same house, had every opportunity for love, yet never
loved. And it was exactly because she was an actress, and a light
good-for-nothing creature that it so happened; the very multiplicity of
lovers prevented her falling in love; the very carelessness of her life,
poor girl, rendered a friend so charming to her. It would have spoiled
the friend to have made him an adorer; it would have turned the rarity
into the every-day character. Now, so it is with me and Saville; I like