--

"Miss Sharp"--

She advanced and kept beside me--.

"Does not this place interest you awfully?" I hazarded.

"Yes."

"Do you know it well?"

"Yes."

"What does it say to you?"

"It is ever a reminder of what to avoid."

"What to avoid! but it is perfectly beautiful. Why should you want to
avoid beauty?!"

"I do not--it is what this was meant to stand for and what human beings
failed in allowing it to do--that is the lesson."

I was frightfully interested.

"Tell me what you mean?"

"The architects were great, the king's thought was great--but only in
one way--and everyone--the whole class--forgot the real meaning of
_noblesse oblige_, and abused their power--and so the revolution swept
them away--They put false value upon everything--false values upon birth
and breeding--and no value upon their consequent obligations, or upon
character--."

"You believe in acknowledging your obligations I know"--

"Yes--I hope so--Think in that palace the immense importance which was
given to etiquette and forms and ceremonies--and to a quite ridiculous
false sense of honour--they could ruin their poor tradesmen and--yet--."

"Yes"--I interrupted--"it was odd, wasn't it?--a gentleman was still a
gentleman, never paying his tailor's bills--but ceased to be one if he
cheated at cards--."

Miss Sharp suddenly dropped her dark blue parasol and bent to pick it up
again--and as she did she changed the conversation by remarking that
there were an unusual quantity of aeroplanes buzzing from Buc.

This was unlike her--I cannot think why she did so. I wanted to steer
her back to the subject of Versailles and its meaning--.

Burton puffed a little as we went up the rather steep slope by the _Aile
du Nord_, and Miss Sharp put her hand on the bar and helped him to push
the chair.

"Is it not hateful for me being such a burden"--I could not help
saying--.

"It leaves you more time to think--."

"Well! that is no blessing--that is the agony--thinking."

"It should not be--to have time to think must be wonderful"--and she
sighed unconsciously.

Over me came a kind of rush of tenderness--I wanted to be strong again,
and protect her and make her life easy, and give her time and love and
everything in the world she could wish for--But I dared not say
anything, and she hung back again a little, and once more it made the
conversation difficult--and when we reached a sheltered spot by the
"_point du jour_" I felt there w