e already
washed her face. Kindly pity me as the innocent victim of fantastic
circumstances."

"I don't see why I should pity you," said Judith.

I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten ways of
doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the one way that
is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the very contingency I had
feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced Judith against Carlotta. I had
aroused the Ishmaelite--her hand against every woman and every woman's
hand against her--that survives in all her sex.

"My dear Judith," said I, "if a wicked fairy godmother had decreed that
a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you would have extended
me your sympathy. But because Fate has inflicted on me an equally
embarrassing guest in the shape of a young woman--"

"My dear Marcus," interrupted Judith, "the healthy rhinoceros would know
twenty times as much about women as you do." This I consider one of the
silliest remarks Judith has ever made. "Do," she continued, "tell me
something coherent about this young person you call Carlotta."

I told the story from beginning to end.

"But why in the world did you keep it from me?" she asked.

"I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman," said I.

"The most elementary sense of woman or any one else would have told you
that you were doing a very foolish thing."

"How would you have acted?"

"I should have handed her over at once to the Turkish consulate."

"Not if you had seen her eyes."

Judith tossed her head. "Men are all alike," she observed.

"On the contrary," said I, "that which characterises men as a sex is
their greater variation from type than women. It is a scientific fact.
You will find it stated by Darwin and more authoritatively still by
later writers. The highest common factor of a hundred women is far
greater than that of a hundred men. The abnormal is more frequent in the
male sex. There are more male monsters."

"That I can quite believe," snapped Judith.

"Then you agree with me that men are not all alike?"

"I certainly don't. Put any one of you before a pretty face and a pair
of silly girl's eyes and he is a perfect idiot."

"My dear Judith," said I, "I don't care a hang for a pretty face--except
yours."

"Do you really care about mine?" she asked wistfully.

"My dear," said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking her
hand, "I've been longing for it for six weeks." And I counted the weeks
on her