me how polite you were."

"I asked how many children she had. She said she had none. I said it was
a pity. And then I said, 'I am eighteen years old and I want to marry
quite soon and have children. How old are you?' And she would not tell
me. I said, 'You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.'
I said other things, about her husband, which I forget. Oh, I was very
polite."

She smiled up at me in quest of approbation. I checked a horrified
rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem,
she had been "very polite." But my poor Judith! Every artless question
had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot. Her husband: the handsome
blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and
after two unhappy years had left her broken; children: they would have
kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them?
Her age: it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers
at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense
of bravado. And the sweet insolence of youth says: "I am eighteen: how
old are you?"

My poor Judith! Once more, on our walk home, I discoursed to Carlotta on
the differences between East and West.

"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta this evening at dinner--"I have decided now
that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to
see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her
irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum
when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by
the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of
scratching the side of my somewhat prominent nose--Seer Marcous, why
does Mrs. Mainwaring keep your picture in her bedroom?"

I am glad Stenson happened to be out of the room. His absence saved the
flaying of my nasal organ. I explained that it was the custom in England
for ladies to collect the photographs of their men friends, and use them
misguidedly for purposes of decoration.

"But this," said Carlotta, opening out her arms in an exaggerated way,
"is such a big one."

"Ah, that," I answered, "is because I am very beautiful."

Carlotta shrieked with laughter. The exquisite comicality of the jest
occasioned bubbling comments of mirth during the rest of the meal, and
her original indiscreet question was happily forgotten.

CHAPTER X

10th July.

Judith and I have had our day in