"Indeed, indeed, it is. Isn't yours?"

   "It had never occurred to me that it was."

   "You're lucky. Mine is passed in the dungeons of Castle Ennui," he said.

   "Oh, Castle Ennui. Ah, yes. You mean you're bored?"

   "At this particular moment I'm savouring the most exquisite excitement," he professed. "But in general, when I am not working or sleeping, I'm bored to extermina

   tion—incomparably bored. If only one could work and sleep alternately, twenty-four hours a day, the year round! There's no use trying to play in London. It's so hard to find a playmate. The English people take their pleasures without salt."

   "The dungeons of Castle Ennui," she repeated meditatively. "Yes, we are fellow-prisoners. I'm bored to extermination too. Still," she added, "one is allowed out on parole, now and again. And sometimes one has really quite delightful little experiences."

   "It would ill become me, in the present circumstances, to dispute that," he answered, bowing.

   "But the castle waits to reclaim us afterwards, doesn't it?" she mused. "That's rather a happy image, Castle Ennui."

   "I'm extremely glad you approve of it. Castle Ennui is the bastile of modern life. It is built of prunes and prisms; it has its outer court of convention, and its inner court of propriety; it is moated round by respectability, and the shackles its inmates wear are forged of dull little duties and arbitrary little rules. You can only escape from it at the risk of breaking your social neck, or remaining a fugitive from social justice to the end of your days. Yes, it

    is

   a fairly decent little image."

   "A bit out of something you're preparing for the press?" she hinted.

   "Oh, how unkind of you!" he cried. "It was absolutely extemporaneous."

   "One can never tell, with

    vous autres gens-de-lettres

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