tians and wallowing
in wet and dirt. . . .

About this time, according to the sequence of events recorded in my all
too scraggy diary, Doria came to us for a week-end, her first visit
since Jaffery's outrageous conduct. She was glad to make friends with us
once more, and to prove it showed the pleasanter side of her character.
She professed not to have forgiven Jaffery; but she referred to the
terrible episode in less vehement terms. It was obvious to us both that
she missed him more than she would confess, even to herself. In her
reconstituted existence he had stood for an essential element.
Unconsciously she had counted on his devotion, his companionship, his
constant service, his bulky protection from the winds of heaven. Now
that she had driven him away, she found a girder wanting in her life's
neat structure, which accordingly had begun to wobble uncomfortably.
After all, she had provoked the man (this with some reluctance she
admitted to Barbara), and he had only picked her up and shaken her. He
had had no intention of dashing out her brains or even of giving her a
beating. In her heart she repented. Otherwise why should she take so ill
Jaffery's flight with Liosha, which she characterised as abominable, and
Liosha's flight with Jaffery, which she characterised as monstrous?

"I can't talk to Barbara about it," she said to me on the Sunday
morning, perching herself on the corner of my library table, a
disrespectful trick which she had caught from my wife, while I sat back
in my writing-chair. "Barbara seems to be bemused about the woman. One
would think she was a kind of saint, incapable of stain."

"In one specific way," I replied, "I think she is."

"Oh, rubbish, Hilary!" she smiled, and swung her little foot. "You, a
man of the world, how can you talk so? First she runs off with that
dreadful fellow and a few hours afterwards runs off with Jaffery. What
respectable woman--well, what honest woman, according to the term of the
lower classes--would run away with two men within twenty-five hours?"

"She went off with Fendihook, honourably, thinking he was going to marry
her. She has joined Jaffery honourably, too, because there's no question
of marriage or anything else between them."

"_Sancta simplicitas!_" She shook her head from side to side and looked
at me pityingly. "I'll allow Jaffery is just a fool. But she isn't. The
best one can say for her is that she has no moral sense. I know the
type."

"Wher