f
dislike from mere instinct. That dummy had been made to measure years
before. It had to wear for days and days the Imperial Byzantine robes in
which Dona Rita sat only once or twice herself; but of course the folds
and bends of the stuff had to be preserved as in the first sketch. Dona
Rita described amusingly how she had to stand in the middle of her room
while Rose walked around her with a tape measure noting the figures down
on a small piece of paper which was then sent to the maker, who presently
returned it with an angry letter stating that those proportions were
altogether impossible in any woman. Apparently Rose had muddled them all
up; and it was a long time before the figure was finished and sent to the
Pavilion in a long basket to take on itself the robes and the hieratic
pose of the Empress. Later, it wore with the same patience the
marvellous hat of the "Girl in the Hat." But Dona Rita couldn't
understand how the poor thing ever found its way to Marseilles minus its
turnip head. Probably it came down with the robes and a quantity of
precious brocades which she herself had sent down from Paris. The
knowledge of its origin, the contempt of Captain Blunt's references to
it, with Therese's shocked dislike of the dummy, invested that summary
reproduction with a sort of charm, gave me a faint and miserable illusion
of the original, less artificial than a photograph, less precise, too.
. . . But it can't be explained. I felt positively friendly to it as if it
had been Rita's trusted personal attendant. I even went so far as to
discover that it had a sort of grace of its own. But I never went so far
as to address set speeches to it where it lurked shyly in its corner, or
drag it out from there for contemplation. I left it in peace. I wasn't
mad. I was only convinced that I soon would be.

CHAPTER II

Notwithstanding my misanthropy I had to see a few people on account of
all these Royalist affairs which I couldn't very well drop, and in truth
did not wish to drop. They were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which
somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or
elsewhere. On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact
with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the
mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one
acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence
born from the dealings with the e