nd wept over the loosened binding.

The question is: What on earth am I to do? Why has Judith chosen this
particular time to shut up her flat and sequester herself in Paris?
Why did my lawyers appoint this particular morning for me to sign their
silly documents? Why did I turn up three hours late? Why did I walk down
the Thames Embankment? And why, oh, why, did I seat myself on a bench in
the gardens below the terrace of the National Liberal Club?

Yesterday was one of the most peaceful and happy days of my existence. I
worked contentedly at my history; I gossiped with Antoinette who came to
demand permission to keep a cat.

"What kind of a cat?" I asked.

"Perhaps Monsieur does not like cats?" she inquired, anxiously.

"The cat was worshipped as a god by the ancient Egyptians," I remarked.

"But this one, Monsieur," she said in breathless reassurance, "has only
one eye."

I would sooner talk to Antoinette than the tutorial staff of Girton. If
she woke up one morning and found she had a mind she would think it a
disease.

In the afternoon I strolled into Regent's Park and meeting the
McMurray's nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around whom
seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat, I took him
off to the Zoological Gardens. On the way he told me, with great glee,
that his German governess was in bed with an awful sore throat; that he
wasn't doing any lessons; that the sheepish hoverer was Milly's young
man, and that the silly way they went on was enough to make one sick.
When he had fed everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I
drove him to the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents. I
love a couple of hours with a child when it is thoroughly happy and
on its best behaviour. And the enjoyment is enhanced by the feeling of
utter thankfulness that he is not my child, but somebody else's.

In the evening I read and meditated on the happiness of my lot.
The years of school drudgery have already lost their sharp edge of
remembered definition, and sometimes I wonder whether it is I who lived
through them. I had not a care in the world, not a want that I could not
gratify. I thought of Judith. I thought of Sebastian Pasquale. I
amused myself by seeking a Renaissance type of which he must be the
reincarnation. I fixed upon young Olgiati, one of the assassins of
Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Of the many hundreds of British youths who passed
before my eyes during my slavery, h