nd a
child. But a dog comes into it about the middle, and from that point
onward it is impossible to tell who is talking--sometimes you think it is
the angel, and then it sounds more like the dog. The child is the
easiest to follow: it talks all the time through its nose. If I have
heard that recitation once I have heard it fifty times; and now she is
busy learning an encore.

And all the World had Sense!

"What hurts me most," he went on, "is having to watch her making herself
ridiculous. Yet what am I to do? If I explain things to her she will be
miserable and ashamed of herself; added to which her frankness--perhaps
her greatest charm--will be murdered. The trouble runs through
everything. She won't take my advice about her frocks. She laughs, and
repeats to me--well, the lies that other women tell a girl who is
spoiling herself by dressing absurdly; especially when she is a pretty
girl and they are anxious she should go on spoiling herself. She bought
a hat last week, one day when I was not with her. It only wants the
candles to look like a Christmas tree. They insist on her taking it off
so they may examine it more closely, with the idea of having one built
like it for themselves; and she sits by delighted, and explains to them
the secret of the thing. We get to parties half an hour before the
opening time; she is afraid of being a minute late. They have told her
that the party can't begin without her--isn't worth calling a party till
she's there. We are always the last to go. The other people don't
matter, but if she goes they will feel the whole thing has been a
failure. She is dead for want of sleep, and they are sick and tired of
us; but if I look at my watch they talk as if their hearts were breaking,
and she thinks me a brute for wanting to leave friends so passionately
attached to us.

"Why do we all play this silly game; what is the sense of it?" he wanted
to know.

I could not tell him.

CHAPTER VI

Fire and the Foreigner.

They are odd folk, these foreigners. There are moments of despair when I
almost give them up--feel I don't care what becomes of them--feel as if I
could let them muddle on in their own way--wash my hands of them, so to
speak, and attend exclusively to my own business: we all have our days of
feebleness. They will sit outside a cafe on a freezing night, with an
east wind blowing, and play dominoes. They will stand outside a tramcar,
rushing th