Half a pound of black grapes completed their shopping, and then, with their arms full of their purchases, they made their way home again, the two happiest people in what is, after all, a not unhappy world.

Then came the cooking and the laying of the table.  For all her Leonardo face, Beauty was a great cook—­like all good women, she was as earthly in some respects as she was heavenly in others, which I hold to be a wise combination—­and, indeed, both were excellent cooks; and the poet was unrivalled at ‘washing up,’ which, I may say, is the only skeleton at these Bohemian feasts.

You should have seen the gusto with which Beauty pricked those sausages—­I had better explain to the un-Bohemian reader that to attempt to cook a sausage without first pricking it vigorously with a fork, to allow for the expansion of its juicy gases, is like trying to smoke a cigar without first cutting off the end—­and oh! to hear again their merry song as they writhed in torment in the hissing pan, like Christian martyrs raising hymns of praise from the very core of Smithfield fires.

Meanwhile, the poet would be surpassing himself in the setting-out of the little table, cutting up the bread reverently as though it were for an altar—­as indeed it was,—­studying the effect of the dish of tomatoes, now at this corner, now at that, arranging the flowers with much more care than he arranged the adjectives in his sonnets, and making ever so sumptuous an effect with that half a pound of grapes.

And then at last the little feast would begin, with a long grace of eyes meeting and hands clasping:  true eyes that said, ’How good it is to behold you, to be awake together in this dream of life!’ true hands that said, ’I will hold you fast for ever—­not death even shall pluck you from my hand, shall loose this bond of you and me’; true eyes, true hands, that had immortal meanings far beyond the speech of mortal words.

And it had all come out of that dull history of socialism, and had cost little more than a crown!  What lovely things can be made out of money!  Strange to think that a little silver coin of no possible use or beauty in itself can be exchanged for so much tangible, beautiful pleasure.  A piece of money is like a piece of opium, for in it lie locked up the most wonderful dreams—­if you have only the brains and hearts to dream them.

When at last the little feast grew near its end, Love and Beauty would smoke their cigarettes together; and it was a favourite trick of theirs to lower the lamp a moment, so that they might see the stars rush down upon them through the skylight which hung above their table.  It gave them a sense of great sentinels, far away out in the lonely universe, standing guard over them, seemed to say that their love was safe in the tender keeping of great forces.  They were poor, but then they had the stars and the flowers and the great poets for their servants and friends; and, best of all, they had each other.  Do you call that being poor?