The Metropolis

After that, who would not have watched.'' There were large dishes of rare fruits upon the table — fruits which had been packed in cotton wool and shipped in cold storage from every corner of the earth. There were peaches which Tiad come from South Africa (they had cost ten ■dollars apiece). There were bunches of Hamburg grapes, dark purple and bursting fat, which had been grown in a hot-house, wrapped in paper bags. There were nectarines and plums, and pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes of plump strawberries — raised in pots. There were quail which had come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was lettuce raised by elec-

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trie light, and lima beans that had come from Porto Kico, and artichokes brought from France at a cost of one dollar each. — And all these extraordinary viands were washed down by eight or nine varieties of wines, from the cellar of a man who had made collecting them a fad for the last thirty years; who had a vineyard in France for the growing of his own champagne, and kept twenty thousand quarts of claret m storage all the time — and procured his Rhine wine from the cellar of the Emperor of Germany, at a cost of twenty-five dollars a quart!

There were twelve people at dinner, and afterward they made two tables for bridge, leaving Charlie Carter to talk to Alice, and Mrs. Winnie to devote herself to Montague, according to her promise. "Everybody likes to see my house," she said. "Would you.?" And she led the way from the dining room into the great conservatory, which formed a central court extending to the roof of the building. She pressed a button, and a soft radiance streamed down from above, in the midst of which Mrs. Winnie stood, with her shimmering jewels a very goddess of the fire.

The conservatory was a place in which he could have spent the evening; it was filled with the most extraordinary varieties of plants. "They were gathered from all over the world," said Mrs. Winnie, seeing that he was staring at them. " My" husband employed a connoisseur to hunt them out for him. He did it before we were married — he thought it would make me happy."

In the centre of the place there was a fountain^

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twelve or fourteen feet in height, and set in a basin of purest Carrara marble. By the touch of a button the pool was flooded with submerged lights, and one might see scores of rare and beautiful fish swimming about.

"Isn't it fine!" said Mrs. Winnie, and added eagerly, "Do you know, I come here at night, sometimes when I can't sleep, and sit for hours and gaze. All those living things, with their extraordinary forms — some of them have faces, and look like human beings! And I wonder what they think about, and if life seems as strange to them as it does to me."

She seated herself by the edge of the pool, and gazed in. "These fish were given to me by my cousin, Ned Carter. They call him Buzzie. Have you met him yet ? — No, of course not. He's Charlie's brother, and he collects art things — the most unbelievable things. Once, a long time ago, he took a fad for goldfish — some goldfish are very rare and beautiful, you know — one can pay twenty-five and fifty dollars apiece for them. He got all the dealers had, and when he learned that there were some they couldn't get, he took a trip to Japan and China on purpose to get them, xou know they raise them there, and some of them are sacred, and not allowed to be sold or taken out of the country. And he had all sorts of carved ivory receptacles for them, that he brought home with him — he had one beautiful marble basin about ten feet long, that had been stolen from the Emperor."

Over Montague's shoulder where he sat, there hung an orchid, a most curious creation, an ex-

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plosion of scarlet flame. "That is the odonto-glossum" said Mrs. Winnie. "Have you heard of it.?"

"Never," said the man.

"Dear me," said the other. "Such is fame!"

"Is it supposed to be famous.?" he asked.

"Very," she replied. "There was a lot in the newspapers about it. You see Winton — that's my husband, you know — paid twenty-five thousand dollars to the man who created it; and that made a lot of foolish talk — people come from all over to look at it. I wanted to have it, because its shape is exactly like the coronet on my crest. Do you notice that?"

"Yes," said Montague. "It's curious."