her happy when removed from their influence. Paul Montague was
of the latter sort. At this time he was thoroughly in love with Hetta
Carbury, and was not in love with Mrs Hurtle. He would have given much
of his golden prospects in the American railway to have had Mrs Hurtle
reconveyed suddenly to San Francisco. And yet he had a delight in her
presence. 'The acting isn't very good,' he said when the piece was
nearly over.

'What does it signify? What we enjoy or what we suffer depends upon
the humour. The acting is not first-rate, but I have listened and
laughed and cried, because I have been happy.'

He was bound to tell her that he also had enjoyed the evening, and was
bound to say it in no voice of hypocritical constraint. 'It has been
very jolly,' he said.

'And one has so little that is really jolly, as you call it. I wonder
whether any girl ever did sit and cry like that because her lover
talked to another woman. What I find fault with is that the writers
and actors are so ignorant of men and women as we see them every day.
It's all right that she should cry, but she wouldn't cry there.' The
position described was so nearly her own, that he could say nothing to
this. She had so spoken on purpose,--fighting her own battle after her
own fashion, knowing well that her words would confuse him. 'A woman
hides such tears. She may be found crying because she is unable to
hide them;--but she does not willingly let the other woman see them.
Does she?'

'I suppose not.'

'Medea did not weep when she was introduced to Creusa.'

'Women are not all Medeas,' he replied.

'There's a dash of the savage princess about most of them. I am quite
ready if you like. I never want to see the curtain fall. And I have
had no nosegay brought in a wheelbarrow to throw on to the stage. Are
you going to see me home?'

'Certainly.'

'You need not. I'm not a bit afraid of a London cab by myself.' But of
course he accompanied her to Islington. He owed her at any rate as
much as that. She continued to talk during the whole journey. What a
wonderful place London was,--so immense, but so dirty! New York of
course was not so big, but was, she thought, pleasanter. But Paris was
the gem of gems among towns. She did not like Frenchmen, and she liked
Englishmen even better than Americans; but she fancied that she could
never like English women. 'I do so hate all kinds of buckram. I like
good conduct, and law, and religion too if it be not forc