xpression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense,
therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with
regard to Mrs. Willoughby's invitation.

I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington
Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park
to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had
finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her
lips.

"My dear Marcus," she said, "there is no man, however humble-minded, who
has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate,
has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you,
my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your
beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up
as a feminine psychologist."

"And pray, why not?" I asked, somewhat nettled.

"Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus
Ordeyne."

This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal
Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme
characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.

CHAPTER XII

August 3d.

_Etretat, Seine-Injerieure_:--A young fellow on the Casino terrace this
evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and passed on. His face,
though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant association. What was it?
The profitless question pestered me for hours. At last, during the
performance at the theatre, I slapped my knee and said aloud,

"I've got it!"

"What?" asked Carlotta in alarm.

"A fly," I answered. Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a
view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It
was a metaphorical fly whose buzzing I had stopped.

The young fellow was he who had pointed me out in Hyde Park to his
companion, and lightly assured her that I was as mad as a dingo dog.
From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of
my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me.
It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am
not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all
night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle
just a few yards away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo
dog? If I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do
not dash at life,