nturer, it really knocks me over. For you don't love him.
You never loved him, you know."

He made a snatch at her hand, absolutely pulled it away from under her
head (it was quite startling) and retaining it in his grasp, proceeded to
a paternal patting of the most impudent kind. She let him go on with
apparent insensibility. Meanwhile his eyes strayed round the table over
our faces. It was very trying. The stupidity of that wandering stare
had a paralysing power. He talked at large with husky familiarity.

"Here I come, expecting to find a good sensible girl who had seen at last
the vanity of all those things; half-light in the rooms; surrounded by
the works of her favourite poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to
myself: I must just run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage her
in her good resolutions. . . And I fall into the middle of an _intime_
lunch-party. For I suppose it is _intime_. Eh? Very? H'm, yes . . . "

He was really appalling. Again his wandering stare went round the table,
with an expression incredibly incongruous with the words. It was as
though he had borrowed those eyes from some idiot for the purpose of that
visit. He still held Dona Rita's hand, and, now and then, patted it.

"It's discouraging," he cooed. "And I believe not one of you here is a
Frenchman. I don't know what you are all about. It's beyond me. But if
we were a Republic--you know I am an old Jacobin, sans-culotte and
terrorist--if this were a real Republic with the Convention sitting and a
Committee of Public Safety attending to national business, you would all
get your heads cut off. Ha, ha . . . I am joking, ha, ha! . . . and
serve you right, too. Don't mind my little joke."

While he was still laughing he released her hand and she leaned her head
on it again without haste. She had never looked at him once.

During the rather humiliating silence that ensued he got a leather cigar
case like a small valise out of his pocket, opened it and looked with
critical interest at the six cigars it contained. The tireless
_femme-de-chambre_ set down a tray with coffee cups on the table. We
each (glad, I suppose, of something to do) took one, but he, to begin
with, sniffed at his. Dona Rita continued leaning on her elbow, her lips
closed in a reposeful expression of peculiar sweetness. There was
nothing drooping in her attitude. Her face with the delicate carnation
of a rose and downcast eyes was as if