He turned up his fair, half-boyish face to hers and laughed.
"Dance! I! Good gracious! Such an exertion would kill me, Lady Errington--don't you know that? I am of a Sultan-like disposition--I shouldn't mind having slaves to dance for me if they did it well--but I should look on from the throne whereon I sat cross-legged,--and smoke my pipe in peace."
"Always the same!" she said lightly. "Are you never serious?"
His eyes darkened suddenly. "Sometimes. Awfully so! And in that condition I become a burden to myself and my friends."
"Never be serious!" interposed Beau Lovelace, "it really isn't worth while! Cultivate the humor of a Socrates, and reduce everything by means of close argument to its smallest standpoint, and the world, life, and time are no more than a pinch of snuff for some great Titantic god to please his giant nose withal!"
"Your fame isn't worth much then, Beau, if we're to go by that line of argument," remarked Errington, with a laugh.
"Fame! By Jove! You don't suppose I'm such an arrant donkey as to set any store by fame!" cried Lovelace, a broad smile lighting up his face and eyes. "Why, because a few people read my books and are amused thereby,--and because the Press pats me graciously on the back, and says metaphorically, 'Well done, little 'un!' or words to that effect, am I to go crowing about the world as if I were the only literary chanticleer? My dear friend, have you read 'Esdras'? You will find there that a certain king of Persia wrote to one 'Rathumus, a story-writer.' No doubt he was famous in his day, but,--to travesty hamlet, 'where be his stories now?' Learn, from the deep oblivion into which poor Rathumus's literary efforts have fallen, the utter mockery and uselessness of so-called fame!"
"But there must be a certain pleasure in it while you're alive to enjoy it," said Lord Winsleigh. "Surely you derive some little satisfaction from your celebrity, Mr. Lovelace?"
Beau broke into a laugh, mellow, musical, and hearty.
"A satisfaction shared with murderers, thieves, divorced women, dynamiters, and other notorious people in general," he said. "They're all talked about--so am I. They all get written about--so do I. My biography is always being carefully compiled by newspaper authorities, to the delight of the reading public. Only the other day I learned for the first time that my father was a greengrocer, who went in for selling coals by the half-hundred and thereby made his fortune--my mother was an unsuccessful oyster-woman who failed ignominiously at Margate--moreover, I've a great many brothers and sisters of tender age whom I absolutely refuse to assist. I've got a wife somewhere, whom my literary success causes me to despise--and I have deserted children. I'm charmed with, the accuracy of the newspapers--and I wouldn't contradict them for the world,--I find my biographies so original! They are the result of that celebrity which Winsleigh thinks enjoyable."