rept over the cloth. Even the joint was decked out
with wine-red leaves, until it looked like a ship flying all her flags
on the King's birthday. Amid all this pomp and ceremony, I sat all
alone, without a human being for whom I might have made myself smart. I,
who for the last twenty years, have never even dressed the salad without
at least one pair of eyes watching me toss the lettuce as though I was
performing some wonderful Indian conjuring trick.

A festal board at which one sits in solitary grandeur is the dreariest
thing imaginable.

I rather wish Torp had less "style," as she calls it. Undoubtedly she
has lived in large establishments and has picked up some habits and
customs from each of them. She is welcome to wait at table in white
cotton gloves and to perch a huge silk bow on her hair, which is
redolent of the kitchen, but when it comes to trimming her poor
work-worn nails to the fashionable pyramidal shape--she really becomes
tragic.

She "romanticises" everything. I should not be at all surprised if some
day she decked her kitchen range with wreaths of roses and hung up works
of art between the stewpans.

I am really glad I did not bring Samuel the footman with me. He could
not have waited on me better than Jeanne, and at any rate I am free from
his eyes, which, in spite of all their respectful looks, always reminded
me of a fly-paper full of dead and dying flies.

Jeanne's look has a something gliding and subtle about it that keeps me
company like a witty conversation. It is really on her account that I
dress myself well. But I cannot converse with her. I should not like to
try, and then to be disillusioned.

Men have often assured me that I was the only woman they could talk with
as though I were one of themselves. Personally I never feel at one with
menkind. I only understand and admire my own sex.

In reality I think there is more difference between a man and a woman
than between an inert stone and a growing plant. I say this ... I
who ...

* * * * *

What business is it of mine? We were not really friends. The fact of her
having confided in me makes no demands on my feelings. If this thing had
happened five years ago, I should have taken it as a rather welcome
sensation--nothing more. Or had I read in the paper "On the--inst., of
heart disease, or typhoid fever," my peace of mind would not have been
disturbed for an hour.

I have purposely refrained from rea