Little Dinners With the Sphinx, and Other Prose Fancies

THE Sphinx and I had not met for quite a long time. We hadn't dined together for-O I should think-four years; and it was strange to both of us to be sitting opposite to each other once more in the friendly glitter of a little dinner table-that glitter which is made up of skillfully mitigated electric light falling on various delicate objects of pleasure: the slim, fluted crystal of the wineglasses, the lustral linen, the tinkling ice in its silver jug, the moon-white roses, and the opals on the Sphinx's long fingers ... "To tell the truth there are several explanations," I continued gravely. "I hardly know which to choose. The scientific one is probably this: Nature is beginning to retrench. She cannot afford any longer to keep up so expensive a house of life. Her bank account of vitality is no longer what it was. Time was when she poured her blood through one's veins like a spendthrift, and kept up ever so fine and flashing a style. One's members lived like princes in their pride, and there was colour and dash for all and to spare. But now nature feels that she can no longer afford this prodigality-she feels, as I said, the need of retrenchment.