p the street crabwise, with
Blink adhering jealously to her master's heels.

"Do you know," said Mr. Lavender, with all the delicacy in his power,
"how terribly subversive of the national effort it is to employ your
beauty and your grace to snare and slacken the sinews of our glorious
youth? The mystery of a woman's glance in times like these should be
used solely to beckon our heroes on to death in the field. But you,
madam, than whom no one indeed has a more mysterious glance, have turned
it to ends which, in the words of a great public man, profane the temple
of our--our----"

Mr. Lavender stopped, for his delicacy would not allow him even in so
vital a cause to call bodies bodies. The woman here edged so close that
he bolted across her in affright, and began to slant back towards the
opposite side of the street.

"Madam," he said, "you must have perceived by now that I am, alas! not
privileged by age to be one of the defenders of my country; and though
I am prepared to yield to you, if by so doing I can save some young hero
from his fate, I wish you to clearly understand that only my sense of
duty as a public man would induce me to do any such thing." At this he
turned his eyes dreadfully upon her graceful form still sidling towards
him, and, conscious again of that delightful scent, felt a swooning
sensation which made him lean against a lamp-post. "Spare me, madam," he
said in a faint voice, "for my country's sake I am ready to do anything,
but I must tell you that I worship another of your sex from afar, and if
you are a woman you will not seek to make me besmirch that adoration or
imperil my chivalry."

So saying, he threw his arms round the lamppost and closed his eyes,
expecting every moment to be drawn away against his will into a life of
vice.

A well-known voice, strangled to the pitch almost of inaudibility, said
in his ear:

"Oh, Don Pickwixote, Don Pickwixote, you will be the death of me!"

Electrified, Mr. Lavender opened his eyes, and in the dull orange rays
of the heavily shaded lamp he saw beside him no other than the writhing,
choking figure of Aurora herself. Shocked beyond measure by the mistake
he had made, Mr. Lavender threw up his hands and bolted past her through
the gateway of his garden; nor did he cease running till he had reached
his bedroom and got under the bed, so terribly was he upset. There, in
the company of Blink, he spent perhaps the most shame-stricken hours of
his existe