was traded away for a new aesthetic article, relics and all, of course.  Perhaps some minor poet bought the piece of furniture, and found the things, and wrote a poem on them.  That is what makes me uncomfortable.  If CECILIA sees the poem in one of the Magazines, and remembers the incidents which the souvenirs recall, she will certainly not be pleased with me, whether she fancies that I wrote the poem, or that I forgot all about the treasures, and traded their receptacle away.  Life is really very complicated.

I met CECILIA at a house in the country.  We sat next each other at dinner.  I found her charming.  We had the same taste in novels,—­she knew Miss AUSTEN almost off by heart, and, like me, she was very fond of field sports.  I flattered myself that she did not find my company uncongenial.  In the evening there was a little dance:  I don’t dance, or at least, it was some time since I had danced, not in fact since the used to make me take dancing lessons at school.  How I hated it!  However, this time I thought it seemed very easy and pleasant, though the floor was extremely polished and slippery, dangerously so.  CECILIA, of course, was my partner.  You know how they describe waltzing in novels, the ecstasy of it, the wild impassioned delight.  Consult GUY LIVINGSTONE and OUIDA.  Well, it was not at all like that.

I do not exactly remember what occurred.  We started, there was a buzz.  I think there was a collision.  I became extremely dizzy....  When I recovered my senses, it was not to find the dark grey eyes of CECILIA bending over me with an expression of anxiety.  No, she was not there.  I went to bed:  I know there was a great contusion on my elbow.

Next morning, it was winter, everyone was going to skate.  Now I could not skate.  At school, when there was a skating holiday, I always passed it beside the fire, which I had all to myself, roasting apples, and reading Ivanhoe.  These were among my happiest hours.  However, I did not tell CECILIA that I could not skate.  I pretended (it seemed safe) to be desperately fond of hunting, and to despise skating.  Besides I had work, literary work, I told CECILIA, an article on Miss AUSTEN.  This pleased her, but nobody accepted the article.  In fact, I was bent on secretly learning to skate.  I sent to town for a pair of “Acmes,” for I knew I never could manage all the straps and buckles of the ordinary modern skate.  I knew of a pond where nobody came, and thither, under cover of night, I smuggled a bed-room chair.  They say that pushing a chair in front of you is a good way to learn.  My terror was extreme; it would be awkward to be caught, at a friend’s house, stealing a bed-room chair.  That I ventured this risk shows how fond of CECILIA I was.  I reached the pond safely, and hid the chair in a dry ditch.  Next day, when presumed to be engaged on literary labours, I sneaked back, sat down on my chair, and tried to put on the skates.  It always seemed so easy when one saw an expert do it, like Mercury donning his winged shoon, and sailing over the ice.  But my hands grew blue as I struggled with the key and the nuts, till I became certain that my boots were in fault.