cause God's
sun meant me to be brown."

"The merest touch would----"

Rose was good-humoured, but obstinate.

And in time she went back to town. She had lost the habit of thinking
about herself or of asking why people did not love her. She gave them
the music that they wanted, and not the music that she knew they ought
to have wanted. She became very simple and friendly. The tone of her
voice softened, and the "r" sound no longer buzzed properly. She had
gone back. And when she was not thinking about it at all, people began
to love her.

One man particularly. And this was fortunate for Rose.

Papa, who was a director of Kekshose & Cie--they make such big
motor-cars that nobody ever dares to let them do as much as they will,
and hardly anybody can afford to buy them--came back for the wedding.

I was just going to say, when that foolish story interrupted me, that
Cardinal Newman wrote a book called "Apologia pro vita sua." I mention
it not as a discovery but as a reminder. I believe that almost every
imaginative author writes an _Apologia pro vita sua_, though under a
different title and in a different guise. I could name one author (and
so, of course, could you) who has written several such apologiae. If I
have never done it myself, it is because I am not of the heroic type
which undertakes lost causes. But I am not quite sure that I am not
writing an _Apologia pro horto meo_. There is a serpent in every Eden,
and its name is Pride. If my half-acre of cat-walk can claim to be a
remote descendant of Eden, the serpent exists there too. I point out the
good things in the garden. I cover up the defects, or--which is even
worse--I make elaborate explanations to prove that they are not defects
at all. I cannot expect anybody to like my garden as much as I do, but I
want them to respect it. Jokes about it always seem to me to be in bad
taste. A very good amateur gardener once came into my garden and
mentioned just a few of the things that he noticed. He did it in the
kindliest way. He taught me quite a good deal, and I hope he will never
know how near I came to beating him on the head with the business end of
a large rake.

I think that what I have said about omission is true. Everybody who
loves art loves omission. I should like, for instance, if I could, to
write in the fewest words that lucidity requires. It has given me
pleasure to omit certain things from my garden.

But all the same--and I may as well confess i