uld see, but
I am convinced that she was perfectly aware each time he fell. She
never talked much to King and he was always a little jealous of me on
that account. But she was very fond of him and always wrote to him
when he was off on his ramblings. His letters to her were always in
rhyme, the cleverest possible.

There are, of course, whole pages to be written--if one wanted to
write them--of that night on the rocks. I naturally don't want to
write them. To say that I have not imagined them would be a stupid
lie; I am human. But I have never been able to bring myself to the
point of view of the modern lady novelist in these matters. Why is it,
by the way, that God has hidden so many things in these latter days
from the prudent and revealed them unto spinsters?

Not that I need to rely on my imagination: Margarita would have saved
me that. Once she got the idea that I was interested in those early
days, she was perfectly willing to draw upon her extraordinary memory
for all the details I could endure. But of course I could not let her.
The darling imbecile--could anything have been so hopelessly
enchanting as Margarita? It is impossible. If you can picture to
yourself a boy--but that is misleading, directly, when I think of her
curled close against me on the rocks, her hand on my arm and all my
veins tingling under it. She was all woman. And yet who but me who
knew her can ever have heard from the lips of any woman such absolute
naivete, such crystal frankness? It was like those dear talks with
some lovely, loved and loving child. But that, again, gives you no
proper idea. For no child's throat sounds such deep, bell-like tones,
such sweet, swooping cadences. And no child's eyes meet yours with
that clear beam, only to soften and tremble and swim suddenly with
such alluring tenderness that your heart shakes in you and slips out
to drown contentedly in those slate-blue depths. No, no, there is no
describing Margarita. Perhaps King came nearest to it when he said
that she was Eve before the fall, plus a sense of humour! But Eve is
distinctly Miltonian to us (unfortunately for the poor woman) and
Margarita would have horrified Milton--there is no doubt of it.

Well, well, I left them on the moonlit rocks, and there I had better
leave them, I suppose. It is so hard for me to make you understand
that Roger was incapable of anything low, when I am apparently doing
my best to catalogue actions that can be set only too easi