bstraction that I started for a walking tour in
the Alps with some friends I met, and for an entire week she passed from
my mind. It was at Lucerne. So completely did she pass from it that I
omitted to tell her I was going or bid her farewell. I went. Dost thou
remember, Lottchen? I came to myself on the top of Pilatus a week after
our wedding day. "What ails thee, man?" said my comrades, for I was
disturbed. "I must go down at once," I cried; "I have forgotten
something." "Bah! you do not need your umbrella up here," they said, for
they knew I forget it much. "It is not my umbrella that I have left
behind," I cried, "it is my wife." They were surprised, for I had
forgotten to tell them I had a wife. And when I got down to Lucerne,
there was the poor Lot quite offended.' And he pulled her nearest ear
and laughed till his spectacles grew dim.

'Delightful,' whispered Mrs. Harvey-Browne to her son. 'So natural.'

Her son never took his eyes off the Professor, ready to pounce on the
first word of wisdom and assimilate it, as a hungry cat might sit ready
for the mouse that unaccountably delays.

'Ah yes,' sighed the Professor, stretching out his legs under the table
and stirring the coffee the waiter had set before him, 'never forget,
young man, that the only truly important thing in life is women. Little
round, soft women. Little purring pussy-cats. Eh, Lot? Some of them will
not always purr, will they, little Lot? Some of them mew much, some of
them scratch, some of them have days when they will only wave their
naughty little tails in anger. But all are soft and pleasant, and add
much grace to the fireside.'

'How true,' murmured Mrs. Harvey-Browne in a rapture, 'how very, very
true. So, so different from Nietzsche.'

'What, thou art silent, little treasure?' he continued, pinching
Charlotte's cheek.' Thou lovest not the image of the little cats?'

'No,' said Charlotte; and the word was jerked up red-hot from an
interior manifestly molten.

'Well, then, pass me those strawberries that blink so pleasantly from
their bed of green, and while I eat pour out of thy dear heart all that
it contains concerning pussies, which interest thee greatly as I well
know, and all else that it contains and has contained since last I saw
thee. For it is long since I heard thy voice, and I have missed thee
much. Art thou not my dearest wife?'

Clearly it was time for me to get up and remove the Harvey-Brownes out
of earshot. I prepar