The old dream came back to her like a picture, bright with colour and light.

But the airy habitation which she had built for herself of old was no "palace lifting to Italian heavens its marble roof." It was only a commonplace lodging in a street running out of the Strand, with just a peep of the river from a trim little balcony.

An airy second-floor sitting-room, with engraved portraits of the great writers on the newly-papered walls: on one side an office-desk, on the other a work-table.

The unpretending shelter of a newspaper hack, who lives _a jour la journee_, and whose wife must achieve wonders in the way of domestic economy in order to eke out his modest earnings.
This was Diana Paget's vision of Paradise, and it seemed only the brighter now that she felt it was never to be anything more than a supernal picture painted on her brain.
After sitting silent for some little time, eager to talk, but waiting to be interrogated, Charlotte was fain to break silence.
"You don't ask me whether I enjoyed myself in Yorkshire, Di," she said, looking shyly down at the little bunch of charms and lockets which employed her restless fingers.
"Didn't I, really ?" replied Diana, languidly; "I thought that was one of the stereotyped inquiries one always made." "I hope you wouldn't make stereotyped inquiries of _me_, Diana." "No, I ought not to do so.

But I think there are times when one is artificial even with one's best friends.