e married him. I caught sight of her again this morning at the Oratory, where I always go if I am in London on Sundays, for the music. Randall told me she is very musical, but I didn't get any speech with her.

The flat looks quite transformed with all the Paris things. They are the greatest success.

Yours,
G.

Wednesday, May 12th.

DEAREST ELSIE,

The dinner-party came off last night. They live in Campden Hill. I was early and the parlour-maid said Mrs Housman would be down directly, and I heard Housman shouting upstairs: "Clare, Clare, guests," but he did not appear himself. I was shown into a large white and heavily gilded drawing-room, with a candelabra, a Steinway grand, and light blue satin and ebony furniture, a good many palms, but no flowers. The drawing-room opened out on to an Oriental back drawing-room with low divans, small stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a silver lamp (from a mosque) hanging from the ceiling, heavy curtains too, behind which I suspect stained-glass windows. Over the chimney-piece an Alma Tadema (a group on a marble seat against a violet sea). At the other end of the room Walter Bell's picture. It was the picture I saw before, but more about that later. On another wall over a sofa a most extraordinary allegorical picture: a precipice bridged by a large serpent, and walking on the serpent two small figures, a woman in white draperies and a knight dressed like Mephistopheles, all these painted in the crudest colours. The Housmans then appeared, and Housman did the honours of the pictures, faintly damned the Alma Tadema, and said the Snake Picture was by Mucius of Munich in what he called Moderne style. He had picked it up for nothing; some day it would be worth pots of mo