"You understand life.... How nice it is here!" He looked about and
then sighed.

"But why do you sigh?"

"Sigh of content! I was just thinking this place would be something
else if an English girl had it. It is curious, lamentable, that
English girls understand nothing--certainly not love."

"As for that, I've always heard so."

"They understand nothing. Not even warmth. One is cold in their
rooms."

"As for that--I mean warmth--one may say that I understand it; I do."

"You understand more than warmth. What is your name?"

"Christine."

She was the accidental daughter of a daughter of joy. The mother, as
frequently happens in these cases, dreamed of perfect respectability
for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris,
meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had
not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she
was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a
vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster
for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly
educated--for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had