ith a
married woman living apart from her husband?"

She reflected. "If my husband says he'll see me damned first before
he'll come back to me, then I'll tell Dale everything, and you can say
what you like to him. He'll be able to judge for himself; but in the
meanwhile you'll let me have what happiness I can."

I accepted the compromise, and, dispossessing Adolphus, sat down again.
I certainly had made progress. Feeling in a benevolent mood, I set forth
the advantages she would reap by assuming her legal status; how at last
she would shake the dust of Bohemia from off her feet, and instead of
standing at the threshold like a disconsolate Peri, she would enter as a
right the Paradise of Philistia which she craved; how her life would be
one continual tea-party, and how, as her husband had doubtless by this
time obtained his promotion, she would be authorised to adopt high and
mighty airs in her relations with the wives of all the captains and
lieutenants in the regiment. She sighed and wondered whether she would
like it, after all.

"Here in England I can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it
very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode."

"There are its equivalents in French," I suggested.

She laughed outright. "Fancy my coming out with a _sacre nom de Dieu_ in
a French drawing-room!"

"Fancy you shouting 'damn' in an English one."

"That's true," she said. "I suppose drawing-rooms are the same all the
world over. I do try to talk like a lady--at least, what I imagine they
talk like, for I've never met one."

"You see one every time you look in the glass," said I.

Her olive face flushed. "You mustn't say such things to me if you don't
mean them. I like to think all you say to me is true."

"Why in the world," I cried, "should you not be a lady? You have the
instincts of one. How many of my fair friends in Mayfair and Belgravia
would have made their drawing-rooms unspeakable just for the sake of not
hurting the feelings of Anastasius Papadopoulos?"

She put aside her work and, leaning over the arm of the chair, her chin
in her hands, looked at me gratefully.

"I'm so glad you've said that. Dale can't understand it. He wants me to
clear the trash away."

"Dale," said I, "is young and impetuous. I am a battered old philosopher
with one foot in the grave."

Quick moisture gathered in her eyes. "You hurt me," she said. "You'll
soon get well and strong again. You must!"

"_Ce que fe