appearing fatuous. So well set up,
with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm
goodheartedness! And she--so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair!
Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real
thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don't, I mean, as a rule,
get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look
the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be
so perfect in manner--even just to the saving touch of insolence that
seems to be necessary. To have all that and to be all that! No, it was
too good to be true. And yet, only this afternoon, talking over the
whole matter she said to me: "Once I tried to have a lover but I was
so sick at the heart, so utterly worn out that I had to send him away."
That struck me as the most amazing thing I had ever heard. She said "I
was actually in a man's arms. Such a nice chap! Such a dear fellow! And
I was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they
say in novels--and really clenching them together: I was saying to
myself: 'Now, I'm in for it and I'll really have a good time for once in
my life--for once in my life!' It was in the dark, in a carriage, coming
back from a hunt ball. Eleven miles we had to drive! And then suddenly
the bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting--it fell on
me like a blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to realize that I had
been spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I burst out crying
and I cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just imagine me
crying! And just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like
that. It certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?"

I don't know; I don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark of
a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county
family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? Or thinks all the time for
the matter of that? Who knows?

Yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of
civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of
all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the
daughters in saecula saeculorum... but perhaps that is what all mothers
teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart
whispering to heart. And, if one doesn't know as much as that about the
first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here?

I asked Mr