old-hag's-cellar-at-midnight since her childhood. She is a handsome
woman, large, and of a fine, high colour; her manner is gaily
dictatorial, and she and I got along very well together.

Probably she appreciated my going to some pains with the clothes I wore
when I went to their house. My visits there were infrequent, not because
I had any fear of wearing out a welcome, but on account of Miss
Elizabeth's "day," when I could see nothing of George for the crowd of
lionising women and time-wasters about him. Her "day" was a dread of
mine; I could seldom remember which day it was, and when I did she had a
way of shifting it so that I was fatally sure to run into it--to my
misery, for, beginning with those primordial indignities suffered in
youth, when I was scrubbed with a handkerchief outside the parlour door
as a preliminary to polite usages, my childhood's, manhood's prayer has
been: From all such days, Good Lord, deliver me!

It was George's habit to come much oftener to see me. He always really
liked the sort of society his sister had brought about him; but now and
then there were intervals when it wore on him a little, I think.
Sometimes he came for me in his automobile and we would make a mild
excursion to breakfast in the country; and that is what happened one
morning about three weeks after the day when we had sought pure air in
the Luxembourg gardens.

We drove out through the Bois and by Suresnes, striking into a
roundabout road to Versailles beyond St. Cloud. It was June, a dustless
and balmy noon, the air thinly gilded by a faint haze, and I know few
things pleasanter than that road on a fair day of the early summer and
no sweeter way to course it than in an open car; though I must not be
giving myself out for a "motorist"--I have not even the right cap. I am