nestness of purpose, I can tell you; but
these later honours, my dear, came to me in the shape of a very loyal and
very scrupulous gentleman. For he is all that. And as a matter of fact
I was touched."

"I know. Even to tears," I said provokingly. But she wasn't provoked,
she only shook her head in negation (which was absurd) and pursued the
trend of her spoken thoughts.

"That was yesterday," she said. "And yesterday he was extremely correct
and very full of extreme self-esteem which expressed itself in the
exaggerated delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all his
moods. I have known him even playful. I didn't listen to him. I was
thinking of something else. Of things that were neither correct nor
playful and that had to be looked at steadily with all the best that was
in me. And that was why, in the end--I cried--yesterday."

"I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being moved by those tears
for a time."

"If you want to make me cry again I warn you you won't succeed."

"No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry season has set in."

"Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly unexpected.
Yesterday he was railing at the world at large, at me who certainly have
not made it, at himself and even at his mother. All this rather in
parrot language, in the words of tradition and morality as understood by
the members of that exclusive club to which he belongs. And yet when I
thought that all this, those poor hackneyed words, expressed a sincere
passion I could have found in my heart to be sorry for him. But he ended
by telling me that one couldn't believe a single word I said, or
something like that. You were here then, you heard it yourself."

"And it cut you to the quick," I said. "It made you depart from your
dignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to be
there. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (men
have been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning of the
world) this sensibility seems to me childish."

"What perspicacity," she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then
changed her tone. "Therefore he wasn't expected to-day when he turned
up, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms of
conversation in that studio. It never occurred to you . . . did it? No!
What had become of your perspicacity?"

"I tell you I was weary of life," I said in a passion.

She had another faint