can be dangerous for a moment must
be hideous for ever?" asked Sir Donald, after a slight pause.

"I'm sure I don't know. But I truly think cows hideous--I truly do."

"Don't put on your gloves," exclaimed Robin at this moment.

Sir Donald glanced at him and said:

"Thank you."

"Why not?" said Lady Holme.

It was obvious to both men that there was no need to answer her
question. She laid the gloves in her lap, smoothed them with her small
fingers, and kept silence. Silence was characteristic of her. When she
was in society she sometimes sat quite calmly and composedly without
uttering a word. After watching her for a minute or two, Sir Donald
said:

"You must know Venice very well and understand it completely."

"Oh, I've been there, of course."

"Recently?"

"Not so very long ago. After my marriage Fritz took me all over Europe."

"And you loved Venice."

Sir Donald did not ask a question, he made a statement.

"No. It didn't agree with me. It depressed me. We were there in the
mosquito season."

"What has that to do with it?"

"My dear Sir Donald, if you'd ever had a hole in your net you'd know.
I made Fritz take me away after two days, and I've never been back. I
don't want to have my one beauty ruined."

Sir Donald did not pay the reasonable compliment. He only stretched out
his lean hands over his knees, and said:

"Venice is the only ideal city in Europe."

"You forget Paris."

"Paris!" said Sir Donald. "Paris is a suburb of London and New York.
Paris is no longer the city of light, but the city of pornography and
dressmakers."

"Well, I don't know exactly what pornography is--unless it's some new
process for taking snapshots. But I do know what gowns are, and I love
Paris. The Venice shops are failures and the Venice mosquitoes are
successes, and I hate Venice."

An expression of lemon-coloured amazement appeared upon Sir Donald's
face, and he glanced at Robin Pierce as if requesting the answer to
a riddle. Robin looked rather as if he were enjoying himself, but the
puzzled melancholy grew deeper on Sir Donald's face. With the air of a
man determined to reassure his mind upon some matter, however, he spoke
again.

"You visited the European capitals?" he said.

"Yes, all of them."

"Constantinople?"

"Terrible place! Dogs, dogs, nothing but dogs."

"Did you like Petersburg?"

"No, I couldn't bear it. I caught cold there."

"And that was why you hated it?"

"Yes. I went ou