s he leaned his head on his arm and sat so
long at the table shading his eyes with his hand that I had to ask,
calmly--you know--whether he wanted me to have him turned out into the
corridor. He fetched an enormous sigh. 'I have only tried to be honest
with you, Rita.' But by the time he got to the door he had regained some
of his impudence. 'You know how to trample on a poor fellow, too,' he
said. 'But I don't mind being made to wriggle under your pretty shoes,
Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar
sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken
in you, that's all.' With that he pretends to dash a tear from his
eye-crocodile!--and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire,
my teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear of anything so
stupid as this affair?" she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a
profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the
stillness of her lips was so perfect directly she ceased speaking that I
wondered whether all this had come through them or only had formed itself
in my mind.

Presently she continued as if speaking for herself only.

"It's like taking the lids off boxes and seeing ugly toads staring at
you. In every one. Every one. That's what it is having to do with men
more than mere--Good-morning--Good evening. And if you try to avoid
meddling with their lids, some of them will take them off themselves.
And they don't even know, they don't even suspect what they are showing
you. Certain confidences--they don't see it--are the bitterest kind of
insult. I suppose Azzolati imagines himself a noble beast of prey. Just
as some others imagine themselves to be most delicate, noble, and refined
gentlemen. And as likely as not they would trade on a woman's
troubles--and in the end make nothing of that either. Idiots!"

The utter absence of all anger in this spoken meditation gave it a
character of touching simplicity. And as if it had been truly only a
meditation we conducted ourselves as though we had not heard it. Mills
began to speak of his experiences during his visit to the army of the
Legitimist King. And I discovered in his speeches that this man of books
could be graphic and picturesque. His admiration for the devotion and
bravery of the army was combined with the greatest distaste for what he
had seen of the way its great qualities were misused. In the conduct of
this great enterpr