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They record the strokes of finesse and the subterfuges necessary to the attainment of the vain ambitions which are the preoccupation of human genius in superficial levels of Society in all ages. We realise the waste of energy and diplomacy expended to score small points in the social game. His art is a mirror to weed-like qualities of human nature which enjoy a spring-time with every generation.

The boats are plying again, but they stop at nightfall, and the river is inky-smooth, with the same long weed-like reflections as in August. Only the reflections are fewer and paler; bright lights are muffled everywhere. The line of the quays is scarcely discernible, and the heights of the Trocadero are lost in the blur of night, which presently effaces even the firm tower-tops of Notre-Dame.

A weight, soft, sticky, pungent, and overwhelming, cloaked my brain, and spreading weed-like, with numbing coldness, stifled the cry ere it left the precincts of my larynx. Hope died within me I was irretrievably lost. A babel of voices now arose together.

Growing so exposed, and in weed-like abundance, it is natural to suppose that it would become hardened, as it were, to rough usage; but it is not so, as it retains all its native properties, in exaggerated form, if possible. Our puny little hothouse specimens are not more delicate or sensitive to the human touch than is this Ceylon mimosa.

A field of this strange plant in full bloom, viewed from above, would probably give an appearance like the spread of a white damask table-cloth of giant proportions. The blooms almost entirely obscure the weed-like foliage. The danger lies in the pungent, sickly, but delicious perfume it exhales, which is so intense, that, coming up against the wind, it could be detected miles away.

My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany me back to lunch a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing.

Theos, holding Sah-luma's arm, stepped eagerly across the threshold; he was brimful of expectation: . . and what mattered it to him whether the weed-like things that grew in this strange pavilion were pure or poisonous, provided he might look once more upon the witching face that long ago had so sweetly enticed him to his ruin! ... Stay! what was he thinking of? Long ago?

Under that stimulating yet mitigated radiance the bottom of the cove was astir with strange life, grotesque in form, but brilliant as jewels or flowers. Long, shining weeds, red, yellow, amber, purple, and olive, waved sinuously among the weed-like sea-anemones which outshone them in colored sheen. Fantastic pink-and-orange crabs sidled awkwardly but nimbly this way and that.