hare--and of course I have
lived longer. And then men are much more complex than women, much more
difficult, too. And you, Monsieur George? Are you complex, with
unexpected resistances and difficulties in your _etre intime_--your inner
self? I wonder now . . ."

The Blunt atmosphere seemed to vibrate all over my skin. I disregarded
the symptom. "Madame," I said, "I have never tried to find out what sort
of being I am."

"Ah, that's very wrong. We ought to reflect on what manner of beings we
are. Of course we are all sinners. My John is a sinner like the
others," she declared further, with a sort of proud tenderness as though
our common lot must have felt honoured and to a certain extent purified
by this condescending recognition.

"You are too young perhaps as yet . . . But as to my John," she broke
off, leaning her elbow on the table and supporting her head on her old,
impeccably shaped, white fore-arm emerging from a lot of precious, still
older, lace trimming the short sleeve. "The trouble is that he suffers
from a profound discord between the necessary reactions to life and even
the impulses of nature and the lofty idealism of his feelings; I may say,
of his principles. I assure you that he won't even let his heart speak
uncontradicted."

I am sure I don't know what particular devil looks after the associations
of memory, and I can't even imagine the shock which it would have been
for Mrs. Blunt to learn that the words issuing from her lips had awakened
in me the visual perception of a dark-skinned, hard-driven lady's maid
with tarnished eyes; even of the tireless Rose handing me my hat while
breathing out the enigmatic words: "Madame should listen to her heart."
A wave from the atmosphere of another house rolled in, overwhelming and
fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through
it as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and
distracting images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty stillness
in my breast.

After that for a long time I heard Mme. Blunt _mere_ talking with extreme
fluency and I even caught the individual words, but I could not in the
revulsion of my feelings get hold of the sense. She talked apparently of
life in general, of its difficulties, moral and physical, of its
surprising turns, of its unexpected contacts, of the choice and rare
personalities that drift on it as if on the sea; of the distinction that
letters and art gave