fortnight.

How he proposes to bear the separation from the object of his flame I
have not inquired; but if forcible objurgations in the vulgar tongue
have any inner significance, I gather that Lady Kynnersley has not
employed an enthusiastic agent.

Being thus free to pursue my eumoirous schemes without his intervention,
for you cannot talk to a lady for her soul's good when her adorer is
gaping at you, I have taken the opportunity to see something of Lola
Brandt.

I find I have seen a good deal of her; and it seems not improbable that
I shall see considerably more. Deuce take the woman!

On the first afternoon of Dale's absence I paid her my promised visit.
It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight,
happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness. Lola Brandt,
supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned depths of
her chair.

We lightly touched on Dale's trip to Berlin. She would miss him
terribly. It was so kind of me to come and cheer her lonely hour.
Politeness forbade my saying that I had come to do nothing of the sort.
To my vague expression of courtesy she responded by asking me with a
laugh how I liked Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos.

I replied that I considered it urbane on his part to invite me to see
his cats perform.

"If you were to hurt one of his cats he'd murder you," she informed me.
"He always carries a long, sharp knife concealed somewhere about him on
purpose."

"What a fierce little gentleman," I remarked.

"He looks on me as one of his cats, too," she said with a low laugh,
"and considers himself my protector. Once in Buda-Pesth he and I were
driving about. I was doing some shopping. As I was getting into the cab
a man insulted me, on account, I suppose, of my German name. Anastasius
sprang at him like a wild beast, and I had to drag him off bodily and
lift him back into the cab. I'm pretty strong, you know. It must have
been a funny sight." She turned to me quickly. "Do you think it wrong of
me to laugh?"

"Why shouldn't you laugh at the absurd?"

"Because in devotion like that there seems to be something solemn
and frightening. If I told him to kill his cats, he would do it. If I
ordered him to commit Hari-Kari on the hearthrug, he would whip out his
knife and obey me. When you have a human soul at your mercy like that,
it's a kind of sacrilege to laugh at it. It makes you feel--oh, I can't
express myself. Look, it doesn't make tears come