CHAPTER V


May 26th.

This morning a letter from Judith.

"Do not laugh at me," she writes. "The road to Paris is paved
with good intentions. I really could not help it. Delphine put
her great arm round my would-be sequestered and meditative self
and carried it off bodily, and here it is in the midst of
lunches, picture-shows, dinners, suppers, theatres and dances;
and if you laugh, you will make me humiliated when I confess that
it is thoroughly enjoying itself."

Laugh at her, dear woman? I am only too glad that she can fling
her Winter Garment of Repentance into the Fires of Paris
Springtide. She has little enough enjoyment in friendless
London. Fill your heart with it, my dear, and lay up a store for
use in the dull months to come. For my part, however, I am
content to be beyond the reach of Delphine's great arm. I must
write to Judith. I shall have to explain Carlotta; but for that
I think I shall wait until she becomes a little more explicable.
In dealing with women it is well to employ discrimination. You
are never quite sure whether they are not merely simple geese or
the most complex of created beings. Perhaps they are such a
curious admixture that you cannot tell at a given moment which