r life was a rather empty one, and it is so easy to slip
into the habit of telling the truth in little matters. And then it
became difficult to draw the line at more important things, until at last
she took to telling the truth about her age; she said she was forty-two
and five months--by that time, you see, she was veracious even to months.
It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not
gratified. On the Woman's birthday, instead of the opera-tickets which
she had hoped for, her sister gave her a view of Jerusalem from the Mount
of Olives, which is not quite the same thing. The revenge of an elder
sister may be long in coming, but, like a South-Eastern express, it
arrives in its own good time.

The friends of the Woman tried to dissuade her from over-indulgence in
the practice, but she said she was wedded to the truth; whereupon it was
remarked that it was scarcely logical to be so much together in public.
(No really provident woman lunches regularly with her husband if she
wishes to burst upon him as a revelation at dinner. He must have time to
forget; an afternoon is not enough.) And after a while her friends began
to thin out in patches. Her passion for the truth was not compatible
with a large visiting-list. For instance, she told Miriam Klopstock
_exactly_ how she looked at the Ilexes' ball. Certainly Miriam had asked
for her candid opinion, but the Woman prayed in church every Sunday for
peace in our time, and it was not consistent.

It was unfortunate, everyone agreed, that she had no family; with a child
or two in the house, there is an unconscious check upon too free an
indulgence in the truth. Children are given us to discourage our better
emotions. That is why the stage, with all its efforts, can never be as
artificial as life; even in an Ibsen drama one must reveal to the
audience things that one would suppress before the children or servants.

Fate may have ordained the truth-telling from the commencement and should
justly bear some of the blame; but in having no children the Woman was
guilty, at least, of contributory negligence.

Little by little she felt she was becoming a slave to what had once been
merely an idle propensity; and one day she knew. Every woman tells
ninety per cent. of the truth to her dressmaker; the other ten per cent.
is the irreducible minimum of deception beyond which no self-respecting
client trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeti