hould not know quite how to take it. You can be so
satirical."

I tried to look as though I could be, but in her case would not.

She let her ungloved hand rest for an instant upon mine. Had she left it
there for two, I should have gone down on my knees before her, or have
stood on my head at her feet--have made a fool of myself in some way or
another before the whole room full. She timed it to a nicety.

"I don't want _you_ to pay me compliments," she said, "I want us to be
friends. Of course, in years, I'm old enough to be your mother." (By
the register I should say she might have been thirty-two, but looked
twenty-six. I was twenty-three, and I fear foolish for my age.) "But
you know the world, and you're so different to the other people one
meets. Society is so hollow and artificial; don't you find it so? You
don't know how I long sometimes to get away from it, to know someone to
whom I could show my real self, who would understand me. You'll come and
see me sometimes--I'm always at home on Wednesdays--and let me talk to
you, won't you, and you must tell me all your clever thoughts."

It occurred to me that, maybe, she would like to hear a few of them there
and then, but before I had got well started a hollow Society man came up
and suggested supper, and she was compelled to leave me. As she
disappeared, however, in the throng, she looked back over her shoulder
with a glance half pathetic, half comic, that I understood. It said,
"Pity me, I've got to be bored by this vapid, shallow creature," and I
did.

I sought her through all the rooms before I went. I wished to assure her
of my sympathy and support. I learned, however, from the butler that she
had left early, in company with the hollow Society man.

A fortnight later I ran against a young literary friend in Regent Street,
and we lunched together at the Monico.

"I met such a charming woman last night," he said, "a Mrs. Clifton
Courtenay, a delightful woman."

"Oh, do _you_ know her?" I exclaimed. "Oh, we're very old friends. She's
always wanting me to go and see her. I really must."

"Oh, I didn't know _you_ knew her," he answered. Somehow, the fact of my
knowing her seemed to lessen her importance in his eyes. But soon he
recovered his enthusiasm for her.

"A wonderfully clever woman," he continued. "I'm afraid I disappointed
her a little though." He said this, however, with a laugh that
contradicted his words. "She would not be