o shall approach most nearly
to her cloudy skirts!

Several times I have strained my ears to catch what are the utterances
that make them laugh so much, make them look both so fluttered and so
smoothed. Each time that I succeed, I am disappointed. There is no touch
of genius, no salt of wit in any thing she says. Her utterances are
hardly more brilliant than my own.

You will despise me, I think, friends, when I tell you that in these
days I made one or two pitiful little efforts to imitate her, to copy,
distantly and humbly indeed, the fashion of her clothes, to learn the
trick of her voice, of her slow, soft gait, of her little, surprised
laugh. But I soon give it up. If I tried till my death-day, I should
never arrive at any thing but a miserable travesty. Before--ere Roger's
return--I used complacently to treasure up any little civil speeches,
any small compliments that people paid me, thinking, "If such and such a
one think me pleasing, why may not Roger?" But now I have given this up,
too.

I seem to myself to have grown very dull. I think my wits are not so
bright as they used to be. At home, I used to be reckoned one of the
pleasantest of us: the boys used to laugh when I said things: but not
even the most hysterically mirthful could find food for laughter in my
talk now.

And so the days pass; and we go to London. Sometimes I have thought that
it will be better when we get there. At least, _she_ will not be there.
How can she, with her husband gnashing his teeth in lonely discomfiture
at his exasperated creditors, and receiptless bills, in sultry St.
Thomas? But, somehow, she is. What good Samaritan takes out his twopence
and pays for her little apartment, for her stacks of cut flowers, for
her brougham and her opera-boxes, is no concern of mine. But, somehow,
there always _are_ good Samaritans in those cases; and, let alone
Samaritans, there are no priests or Levites stonyhearted enough to pass
by these dear, little, lovely things on the other side.

We go out a good deal, Roger and I, and everywhere he accompanies me. It
bores him infinitely, though he does not say so. One night, we are at
the play. It is the Prince of Wales's, the one theatre where one may
enjoy a pleasant certainty of being rationally amused, of being free
from the otherwise universal dominion of _Limelight_ and _Legs_. The
little house is very full; it always is. Some of the royalties are here,
laughing "_a gorge deployee!_" I have b