

E-text prepared by Annie McGuire, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



THE GREEN CARNATION







New York
D. Appleton and Company
1894

Copyright, 1894,
by D. Appleton and Company.




I.


He slipped a green carnation into his evening coat, fixed it in its
place with a pin, and looked at himself in the glass, the long glass
that stood near the window of his London bedroom. The summer evening was
so bright that he could see his double clearly, even though it was just
upon seven o'clock. There he stood in his favourite and most
characteristic attitude, with his left knee slightly bent, and his arms
hanging at his sides, gazing, as a woman gazes at herself before she
starts for a party. The low and continuous murmur of Piccadilly, like
the murmur of a flowing tide on a smooth beach, stole to his ears
monotonously, and inclined him insensibly to a certain thoughtfulness.
Floating through the curtained window the soft lem